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Southern Counties Drama Festival

OPEN 22/02/2022 - 26/02/2022

Venue Name: Barn Theatre

Venue Postcode: RH80AA

Website: https://www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk

Credits: Various

Box Office phone number: 01959561811

Societies: Barn Theatre

Southern Counties Drama Festival at the Barn Theatre, Oxted

 

 

The All-England Theatre Festival has a history dating back to 1919 when the British Drama League was formed. It is the only national competitive one-act drama festival in the UK and organises an eliminating series of festivals which lead ultimately to the British final. The Southern Counties Drama Festival, (previously The Betchworth Festival), a preliminary round of this festival has been an important part of local amateur dramatics in Surrey and Kent for 70 years, and would have celebrated its Platinum Anniversary in 2021.

 

The result is the return of an exciting week of festival drama in 2020 from February 22nd – 26th at the Barn Theatre in Oxted, with 15 teams competing against each other and Louise Manders, G.o.D.A, pressed with the difficult task of deciding who should be declared winner to go forward to the next round of festival, the Eastern Area Final, which is being held at Norden Farm in Maidenhead on 22nd May.

 

Our Patron, the newsreader Nicholas Owen is planning to attend the festival. Nicholas is a well-known journalist and TV presenter of the news, on the BBC News Channel and BBC One. He was born in London and initially educated at Hamsey Green Primary School just up the hill from the Barn Theatre. He began his journalistic career at the Surrey Mirror in 1964, soon moving to Fleet Street and thereafter switching to television reporting in 1981, since when he has become a household name. He moved from the BBC to ITN and after having been there for over 20 years he returned to the BBC in 2007 where he continues to present news and current affairs programmes. As a Strictly Come Dancing contestant he was voted off in the first week of the show in 2006 which he felt confirmed the news desk was the best place for him. As a member of Reigate Amateur Theatrical Society (RATS) he enjoyed the live stage and has taken part in this festival and on the Barn stage, as a competitor, when in 1977 he won the Best Actor Award in Two Gentlemen of Soho.

 

With a mixture of youth and adult teams during the week, most entrants are experienced in festival and several entrants have had recent success in the further rounds that lead to the English and British finals.

 

Tenacity and perseverance has ensured that this festival endures and you can support the endeavour by ordering your tickets by telephoning 01959 561811 or ordering online from www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk. General enquiries can be answered by telephoning 01959 561811 or by email at scdfatbarn@btinternet.com. More information is also available at www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk/scdf.html

 

This year’s selection of plays is an eclectic and interesting mix of comedy, tragedy and drama and a week not to be missed.

 

 

Tuesday 22nd February (7.00pm)

 

Audrey and Me by Jimmie Chinn

Performed by ACE Theatre Company

 

Synopsis

This play for one man and one woman takes place in what appears at first to be a hospital waiting room. The man (Barry) seems to have been taken ill and his wife Audrey has brought him in to get help. She talks to him with forced cheerfulness, playing games, singing songs etc. but he remains silent and it’s clear that they are both very distressed by their situation. Clues emerge that the family is financially not very well off and that Barry has suffered some kind of breakdown.

This play contains a small amount of bad language

 

Curses by Bob Cooke

Performed by Alternate Shadows Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

Is there something funny going on? Doctor Nimble and Nurse Rumbut are on hand to assist Dr Curlew, Psychiatrist at Happy Acres Rest Home for gentlefolk, as he has his hands full; what with patients Miss Friskee, the herpetologist and her visions of vicious vipers, Mr Hairbanger, the primatologist, with his petrifying phantom primates and mysterious newcomer Mr Ribdigger with his memories of menacing mummies! It appears that everything is not as it seems…

 

Permission to Cry by David Campton

Performed by Oast Theatre, Tonbridge

 

Synopsis

Julia Gibbon, is an up and coming junior minister, whose life is thrown into turmoil by the conflict between her private and public life.  The play is told in a series of flashbacks as Julia looks at her love affair, her politics and the hypocritical age we live in.

 

 

Wednesday 23rd February (7.00pm)

 

Tuesday by Alison Carr

Performed by Caterham School

 

Synopsis

It is just another ordinary Tuesday at Lane End School when things suddenly turn very weird indeed. In the school yard, a tear rips across the sky and parallel worlds start to collide. Confusion ensues as ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ try to work out what is going on. How are Ash & Magpie identical? Can Billy cope with having his sister back? Who is Franky?

This play touches on themes of friendship, family, identity, bullying, loneliness and responsibility. In the process, you might just learn something about yourselves, as well as some astronomical theories of the multiverse!

 

15 Reasons Not to Be In a Play by Alan Haehnel

Performed by Glow Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

A group of teenagers hanging out together discuss some of the varied and very random reasons why you shouldn’t be in a play. A series of monologues, duologues and ensemble scenes which explore the potential horrors and hardships of those who may feel the call of the stage!  Whilst providing a fun and entertaining opportunity for this delightful young cast who do feel the call of the stage!

 

 

Thursday 24th February (7.00)

 

Three Kings by Stephen Beresford

Performed by LCA Stage Academy

 

Synopsis

When Patrick is eight years old, his absent father returns unexpectedly for a brief but memorable encounter.

Years later – recalling that meeting, and the revelations that followed – Patrick traces the events of his father’s life, laying bare a journey of grandiose plans, aching disappointments and audacious self-delusion.

Three Kings by Stephen Beresford is a heart-breaking and hilarious play about fathers and sons, the gifts and burdens of inheritance, and the unfathomable puzzle of human relationships.
This play contains swear words

 

 

Hoodie by Lindsay Price

Performed by Glow Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

“This shirt has to show everything there is to know about me, my absolute coolness, and demonstrate my abilities to reach the highest rung on the in-crowd ladder.”

Young people face a tornado of questions every day. What do I wear? What if I wear the wrong thing? What is she wearing? What do I look like? Stop looking at me!

Hoodie examines image and appearance in the vignette style and poses what may be the most difficult question of all – do I stay in the clump or do I stand alone?

 

Gosforth’s Fete by Alan Ayckbourn

Performed by Heathfield Youth Drama

 

Synopsis

Set in the Tea tent of the local Village fete, the whole afternoon and fete is a disaster.

 

 

Friday 25th February (7.00pm)

 

Shakers by John Godber

Performed by Heathfield Youth Drama

 

Synopsis

Adele, Carol, Mel and Nicky are long suffering waitress in the local cocktail bar. Reflecting on the checkout girls, chinless wonders and local lads who frequent the bar.

This play contains offensive language and adult themes

 

Living with Lady Macbeth by Rob John

Performed by Glow Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

There are millions of people like Lily in the world. They’re the ones you hardly ever notice. The ones who never get into the in-crowd. The ones who are thought to be dull, unattractive, untalented and totally ordinary. Sometimes they are also the people who dream of doing something remarkable and proving everybody wrong.

Living with Lady Macbeth flies backwards and forwards in time as it presents Lily’s dreams and fantasies, using metatheatre techniques of a play within a play to intermingle the hidden desires, ambitions and darker recesses inherent in both Lady Macbeth and the almost invisible Lily. When she stuns everyone with an unexpected and chilling performance of Act I Scene V, those around Lily must take notice…and adjust their perceptions of both her and themselves. This is a fast paced play about being a teenager, about being ordinary, about satisfying ambition and about breaking free from the role in which you have been cast in life.

 

Bouncers by John Godber

Performed by Heathfield Youth Drama

 

Synopsis

Eric, Judd, Ralph, and Les are night club bouncers. They reflect on the drunken lads and lassies who frequent this and other night clubs and bars in the city.
This play contains offensive language and adult themes

 

 

Saturday 26th February (2.30pm)

 

Aesop’s Famous Fables and Twisted Tales by Peter Nuttall

Performed by Glow Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

For centuries Aesop has been the most pervasive of classical authors, a voice from ancient Greece that remains strong after two and a half millennia.

If we listen we can hear Aesop’s voice in many cultures, including our own. Without Aesop (and many anonymous collaborators over the centuries) we wouldn’t know that slow but steady wins the race, familiarity breeds contempt and gods help those who help themselves. We would never have heard about the boy who cried wolf, or for that matter, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. We might even count our chickens before they’re hatched.

Considered either as a writer or a team of writers, Aesop was one of the great curators of experience. He helped humanity understand itself. Aesop’s tales were invented for adults but, simplified over the years, the stories help children to explore, question and make sense of their world.

 

 

Arabian Nights by Dominic Cooke

Performed by Heathfield Youth Drama

 

Synopsis

It is wedding night in the palace of King Shahrayar. By morning, the new Queen, Shahrazad, is to be put to death like a thousand young brides before her. She has the one gift that can save her, the gift of storytelling.

With a mischievous imagination and silver tongue, Queen Shahrazad paints a dazzling array of stories and characters. Can the power of storytelling save her life?

 

 

Saturday 26th February (7.00pm)

 

Everyman adapted by Carol Ann Duffy

Performed by Glow Theatre Group

 

Synopsis

Everyman is successful, wealthy, popular and riding high when Death comes calling. Forced to abandon the life he has built, and made to account for the way he has chosen to live, he begins a frantic search to find a friend, anyone, who will defend him and speak for him at his final reckoning. But Death is close behind him and time is running out.

One of the great primal, spiritual myths and a cornerstone of English drama since the 15th Century, this adaptation of Everyman by recent poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is a scathing attack on materialism, shallow, selfish lifestyles and our careless stewardship of the earth. It allows young and old alike the chance to stop and think about the choices they make in life.

This play contains offensive language

 

Tone Clusters by Joyce Carol Oates

Performed by Oast Theatre, Tonbridge

 

Synopsis

What are tone clusters? They are musical disharmony, which will be heard throughout The Oast Theatre’s production of this compelling one-act play.

Discord and disharmony are at the core of this play. Frank and Emily Gulick, a suburban couple from Lakepointe, New Jersey, are being questioned in a television studio by a condescending interviewer about the alleged, horrendous crimes committed by their son, Carl Gulick.

The television interviewer remains invisible and the audience witness the pain and confusion suffered by the Gulicks as they attempt to comprehend the impact that their son’s behaviour has had on their marriage and individual lives.

This play contains adult content, issues and language.

 

  • : current/future_show
  • : 41198
  • : Barn Theatre
  • : 22/02/2022
  • : RH80AA
  • : 26/02/2022
  • : South East
  • : Various
  • : https://www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk
  • : 11.50
  • : 01959561811

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