The third edition of the Guyana National Drama Festival ended its run of performances last Friday with plays entered by students of the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama. There are many points worthy of note, as was outlined on this page last week. This week we look into further significant features of the Festival and the coincidence of these with developing trends in the contemporary national theatre.
These include the prevalence of new plays and new playwrights; the growing tendency of new plays to want to treat burning social issues; the several new debutante groups turning to theatre as a medium through which to address social concerns and communicate messages; the increased presence of leading professional/commercial theatre companies in the Festival, and the fact that the NDF has played a role in these developments. To these may be added the greater effort by playwrights to extend and tax the imagination in their treatment of those subjects and the effort by directors to do the same and to apply creative techniques in producing the plays.
The Open Full Length Plays Category in the NDF is a significant one. Here is where the leading national dramatists and established senior groups may