Curtains Raise on Woolwich Drama Festival
A new drama festival launches at Woolwich Old Baths next month.
Students at the University of Greenwich are organising 10 days of theatre and workshops at their newly opened studio built in the old swimming pools next to the library.
Final year drama students will perform a range of contemporary plays and local arts groups including Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre, Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and Bird College are performing and running workshops for school children.
Pippa Guard, programme leader for drama at the university, hopes this will become a regular event and contribute to local regeneration: “The festival is a celebration of the talent in the area and we hope it will become an annual festival of regional importance.”
“The festival will bring dozens of young, talented performers and theatre makers into Woolwich for 10 exciting days, and they will be joined by hundreds of spectators from schools, community groups, the university and general public.”
Events management students from the university’s business school are getting in on the act too – by organising all the sponsorship and publicity. Student Vanessa Lee says: “Part of our course is to organise an event, so what better than the university’s own drama festival? We’ve already got fantastic support from Woolwich Regeneration Agency, Docklands Light Railway, Berkeley Homes and local businesses. It’s great that people want to see drama back in Woolwich.”
Plays include ‘Crooked’, by Catherine Trieschmann, which premiered at the Bush Theatre last year, ‘The Night Heron’, by Jez Butterworth, which first appeared at the Royal Court and Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’.
The Woolwich Drama Festival runs from 8 - 17 March at the University of Greenwich, the Old Baths, Bathway, Woolwich SE18. Tickets available from 12 February at the Greenwich Theatre Box Office on 020 8858 7755.
For more information visit the Woolwich Drama Festival website: www.gre.ac.uk/wdf. For full listings see Book Now for Woolwich Drama Festival
ENDS
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