The 2013 renewal of Guyana’s National Drama Festival was launched in June by the Minister of Culture Youth and Sport. This is the third annual nation-wide competition in drama, and this year’s edition was officially opened in conjunction with the award of certificates for the course ‘Introduction to The Elements of Stagecraft for Drama Instructors’ conducted by the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama. It was no coincidence that the festival launch and the ‘graduation ceremony’ were part of the same event because of the important common philosophical ground that they share. It is further observed that both have an extremely appropriate link to the School of Drama in its first year. The public launching therefore emphasised the association among three very significant national institutions linked by symbiosis and guided by the same vision and philosophy.
The National Drama Festival (NDF), which started in 2011 and attracted corporate support from Digicel, has had definitive incremental growth. While the general patterns were the same in those two years, the response was much greater and considerably more encouraging in 2012. This was seen in all areas – public interest, audience support, competitive participation and the number of entries. In 2011 the entries could have been handled with one open