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COUNTY DRAMA FESTIVAL 2025

FESTIVAL RULES and ARRANGEMENTS

 

ALL ENGLAND THEATRE FESTIVAL

 

The County Drama Festival is organised by the Somerset Fellowship of Drama (SFD) and is recognised as a Preliminary Round of the All-England Theatre Festival (AETF).

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The Preliminary Round of the All-England Theatre Festival will be held at:
The Warehouse Theatre
Brewery Lane, Ilminster
TA19 9AD
Weekend 22nd/23rd March 2025
Adjudicator: Bob Tomson GoDA  

The overall winner will be invited to perform again at the West of England Semi Final which will be held at The Merlin Theatre Frome. The successful group will have the opportunity to perform their winning play at the English Final. The final round of the competition will be the British final. The details of the semi-final, final and British final will be published shortly.

 

 

YOUTH ENTRIES: These are welcome at our County Drama Festival and will be adjudicated on the same basis as adult groups and groups of mixed ages, being eligible for all Awards. In order to be considered for the Eyris Jones Memorial Trophy for the Best Production by a Youth Group, however, all members of the cast must be under 18 years of age on 22nd  March 2025. Our Youth Group winner is invited to represent Somerset in the Five Counties Youth Festival, in competition with the Youth winners of the preliminary rounds in Bristol, Avon, Wiltshire and Hampshire. Details of this competition will be published shortly.

 

OPTING: It is perfectly OK to enter the County Drama Festival just for the fun of competing with other Somerset drama groups and to benefit from constructive criticism of your work given by a professional adjudicator from GODA. Those who want to opt to go further in the AETF, if they win at County Drama level, should have declared this on the Entry Form Part One, which they will have sent back to the festival co-ordinator ASAP and before 6th January 2025. Any change of plan in this regard should be made clear when the Entry Form Part 2 is returned i.e., before 7th February 2025. The opting fee is £10.00.

 

Please note that ‘declaring to opt’ does commit your drama group to perform at each successive level if selected, so please make a careful note of the dates once published and consider the implications when casting your play.  

 

 

RULES OF ENTRY

  • Entry is open to any amateur group which is currently affiliated to the Somerset Fellowship of Drama.

  • Entrants should take careful note of every aspect of the AETF rules which can be found on the AETF website: http://www.allenglandtheatrefestival.co.uk/documents.htm

  • Particular attention should be paid to the length of your play; it should be at least 20 minutes in length, but no more than 55 minutes. Time penalties are strictly applied and are ruinous!

  • The work entered must be either a one-act play or an extract from a longer play. In the latter case it must be intelligible as it stands to members of the audience who have not seen the play from which it is taken.

  • Unless the work is unpublished, a licence to perform the play, or an extract of it, must be obtained from the publishers in advance of the festival and shown to the Stage Director at the start of your ‘tech’.

  • The script to be used for the performance should be posted to the Festival Organiser no later than three weeks before the festival. Major cuts should be clearly indicated. Photocopied scripts will not be acceptable unless accompanied by a letter from the publisher confirming that the material is out of print. Scripts in electronic form will not be accepted under any circumstances – hard copy only please. A group performing an original play which has been entered in the SFD’s Original Playwriting Competition need not submit a script. Scripts will be returned to the group at the end of the festival, unless they are needed by the Adjudicator in order to prepare a written adjudication. The winner’s script will automatically be forwarded to the festival organiser of the next round.

The SFD Committee reserves the right to refuse an entry.

 

FINANCIAL

There is no entry fee to pay (it used to be £20, but we are only too aware of how much it can cost to put on a one-act play nowadays).

In order to try and help you with a small subsidy, and to encourage you to bring along an audience, the SFD will provide you with 10 discounted tickets for the session in which you are appearing (for which you will be charged £5.00 each, paid in advance). You can use these in any way you wish, but since they have a face value of £10.00 you could sell them to friends and supporters and recoup £50 towards your own expenses.

Your own team – Director, Stage Manager, Technician(s), cast and bone fide Stage Crew – will get complimentary tickets to watch the rest of the plays in your session and the adjudication afterwards. These will be given to you at your ‘tech’. 

The SFD will be responsible for the following expenses:
Adjudicator’s fees, transport and accommodation, General organisation and publicity (printed centrally),
Programmes and tickets (printed centrally) and Hire of venue.

 

RAFFLE
In order to raise funds to help winning team/s with the cost of performing at the next level, the SFD organises a raffle, with a draw at the end of each session. All the money raised will be divided equally between the two teams going forward. Each team is requested to bring a suitable raffle prize with them, to be given to the Festival Director on arrival please.
 

 TROPHIES

Best Actor Award

Best Actress Award

The Eyris Jones Memorial Trophy
Best Production by a Youth Group (all cast to be 17 or less on March 22nd 2025)  

The Edward Grey Memorial Trophy
Best Performer under the age of 30

The Cely Trevillian Cup
Best Production of an Original Play (no public performance prior to the festival)

The Brian Edwards Trophy
Overall Technical Achievement (or specific technical effect)

The Philip de Glanville Trophy

Champagne Moment

 

The Lydia Durston Trophy
Greatest Endeavour

The Hope Cup
Best All-round Presentation

The County Shield
Best Production (highest marks) in the festival. Providing they have ‘opted’ in advance of the festival* this group will go forward to the Semi-Final of the AETF. The winner will also be eligible (by invitation) for the National Drama Festivals Association’s British All-Winners Festival 2025 which is a week-long festival of both Full-Length and One-Act Festival Winners over the previous 12 months, usually held in the last week of June – date/venue to be confirmed.

*In the event that the winner at the County Drama Festival has not ‘opted’, then the runner-up will be invited to represent Somerset in the next and subsequent rounds of the AETF.

NB Engraving of trophies and their safe return before the following year’s County Drama Festival will be the responsibility of the winners.

 

FACILITIES AT THE THEATRE

Auditorium. Seats 150, with an aisle on each side. Access to the auditorium is via the foyer. There are removable steps up to the stage on each side.

Stage. The festival acting area of the stage is approximately 8m wide by 5m deep. There is virtually no apron in front of the tab line. There are wings on each side with a narrow crossover behind the Cyc wall. Access from the dressing rooms is up some open wooden steps, and elements of your set will also have to come this way, via double doors opening onto the tiny car park behind the theatre. The back of the festival acting area is delineated by black traverse tabs, and the area behind these is used for temporary storage of the next set. There is further storage space in the wings R. The stage floor is black.

Tabs. The front tabs are red in colour and are opened and closed by a pulley in the wings stage L. There are three sets of angled solid ‘legs’ each side, providing entrance points. The back tabs are openable, but if a team needs to use the full depth of the stage, back to the white Cyc (approx. 7.5m), they will need to make special arrangements in advance, because of set storage.

Sets. You should consider that what you put on the stage will be assessed as it relates to the curtain surround, and the best setting will be the one which most imaginatively adapts itself to Festival conditions. Please also be aware that your setting time will be 10 minutes maximum, and that you are required to leave a completely bare stage within 5 minutes of the end of your play, so beware of planning too complex a set! Time penalties will be applied if you go over.

Setting: the elements of your set can be brought into the theatre in advance of your session. First up in the session will be placed on stage, next up will be placed behind the traverse tabs, and third up will be stored in the wings stage R, or as directed by the Festival Stage Manager.  

Striking: the elements of your set will have to be moved to the area behind the back tabs during your strike, leaving a bare stage. From there they will need to be loaded into your vehicle (or at least out into the car park) through the double doors during the next group’s 10-minute setting time. The back-stage area must be completely clear of your stuff before the next group’s performance starts, unless prior arrangements have been made with the Festival Stage Manager.

Lighting. An overall cool wash and a warm wash will be provided as standard. Up to three special lighting effects may be requested, but please make sure the Festival Technician is aware of these well in advance so that they can be rigged and gelled before the festival. Focussing will need to be done during your tech. The Warehouse has its own follow-spot, but you will need to provide your own F/S operator if you need to use this. Operation: The Festival Technician will control all the lighting for you but will need to be cued by someone very familiar with the show – usually the sound operator.

Sound. The board is in the lighting box. You will need to provide your own operator. All sound is played through the auditorium speakers. You must bring your own player (minidisc, CD player, computer).

Backstage. There will be a Festival Stage Director and a Festival Timekeeper present at each session. You will need to provide a Stage Manager for your production and may bring additional stage crew if needed. Remember to bring your licence!

Dressing Rooms. There are three quite small dressing rooms upstairs backstage, each with mirrors and washbasins. They would be comfortable for a cast of 4 – 6 and could probably squeeze in 8. One of the dressing rooms has an additional storeroom which could be used in anyone requires complete privacy – please let me know if this would be helpful. If you have a larger cast you will need to use the Green Room, on the other side of the landing, which is much bigger but has no mirrors.

Technical rehearsals. These will probably take place on the morning or early afternoon of the day on which you will be performing. You will have 40 minutes to decide what lighting to use, to check sound levels and to do voice checks. You can try out your set on stage if you wish and check tab positions and sightlines, but it is very unlikely that you will have time to run much of your play, except possibly cue-to-cue. Don’t be too ambitious!
 

ENQUIRIES:

Irene Glynn
County Drama Festival Coordinator

Southwick, Chard, Somerset TA20 2HS
Email: ireneglynn61@gmail.com
Tel: 01460 238417   Mob: 07934 610155

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