THE National Drama Festival 2013 (NDF), an annual production of the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport (MCYS) which was launched on June 19 last, has already stepped up into high gear.

Scenes from workshops in Berbice and Linden

Entries into the Festival, which has six million dollars as an additional incentive, closed last Sunday, with no signs of an extension of the deadline in the offing. So, it is now or never for 2013. In the past, the NDF afforded winners performing trips, a national stage, and follow-up public performances after competition.
Following the special outreach drama programme that targeted youths over the August holidays, the NDF undertook two one-day workshops in Linden and Berbice over the weekend of Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September, and over 200 eager young dramatists participated in the proceedings.  The activities focused on enhancing production capability, with special emphasis being placed on script and technical design development.
The outlying districts have had an inherent technical design weakness in their plays presented at previous festivals. This accorded them a disadvantage when placed on the massive National Cultural Centre stage, with its vast technical facilities. This was addressed at workshops. On Saturday, from 09:00 hours, youth groups, church groups, schools and senior dramatists were schooled in these stage and script techniques at the Lichas Hall in Linden. The same took place at the New Amsterdam Multilateral School the following day.
The outreach programme, the signature innovation for NDF 2013, which points to the quality thrust of NDF 2013, has so far received enthusiastic support. The format of these engagements was for the facilitators and members of the mentor corps of the festival to execute sessions of basic stimulative dramatic activities to participants specially “prep-ped” by the youth field officer and the MCYS summer camp coordinator. The participants at these sessions included groups in that catchment area, in addition to the attendees at the camps.
These exercises covered lots of ground, as was evidenced from the following list:

A TUTORIAL OF ACTIVITIES:
The New Amsterdam Prisons’ workshop was held in July at the recreational club, and one of two plays was entered. Work is proceeding under the guidance of mentor Rayel Franklin.
An MCYS workshop was held at Timehri Community Centre.
The Human Services Ministry engaged the NDF to carry out a two-week drama workshop at Kuru Kuru which was aimed at coming up with a play or plays as part of a larger project of that Ministry.
An MCYS summer camp drama day was also conducted at the Drop-in Centre at Angoy’s Avenue in New Amsterdam. After this engagement, the attendees also entered a play into the NDF, and worked under the guidance of mentor Errol Chan.
The MCYS also held a summer camp drama day at Youth Friendly space at Canal #2, West Bank Demerara, and at Johanna Black Bush Polder, Corentyne. Ray Chatterpaul, the mentor who oversees this catchment area, is working on a play with the attendees.
MCYS held a summer camp drama day at Swingstar Community Developers Building at #58 Village, Corentyne.
Finally, on Aug 16, at the Multi Purpose Cente in Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara, the MCYS held a camp.
There are still some outstanding engagements of this kind in addition to the mentors’ outreach. This outreach is when the Corp visits all plays entered into NDF 2013 to ensure their readiness and to ascertain their needs, technical and otherwise. No stone is left unturned to ensure a massive improvement in quality of presentation.
Entrants are asked to be ready for preliminaries in Linden, Berbice and Georgetown, beginning October 1, 2013.  The winners will go forward to the finals, slated for the period October 18 to 26, 2013.