Skip to main content
NSDF Logo NSDF
Donate
What's On
NSDF HUB
What We Do
What We Do
What is NSDF all about?
NSDF LAB NSDF HUB NSDF CREATES Access Toolkit Our Yearly Festival The Bigger Room Project
Support Us
Support Us
How can you support NSDF's work?
Alumni Supporters Scheme Our Supporters Make a Donation Leave a Legacy
Our Story
Our Story
Find out more about the 65 year old Festival.
Our Mission Our History Our Principles Our People Our Alumni
The Fourth Wall
The Fourth Wall
Read articles from Noises Off, our Festival Magazine, and catch the latest from Team NSDF at Blogs & News
Blogs & News Noises Off
Register
Noises Off Article

Hold for applause

Published on
10th April 2020

There are no awards at this year's NSDF, and there shouldn't be at any other, says Jack Ellis

Share this article

There are no awards at NSDF this year. Of course there aren’t, there aren’t any shows for us all to watch, so obviously the panel of judges can’t give awards out.

I think it should stay that way. The lack of awards, not the no shows thing.

The awards ceremony, held on the last night of the festival, is supposed to be a celebration of the hard work that so many people have put into the shows that are selected for the festival. It is a chance to recognise the great acting and directing and writing and technical design of these shows. It’s just never felt that way for me.

The point of NSDF to me is in the collaboration and conversation that it creates. I’ve long maintained (for the last two years) that nothing will make you want to be a better theatre-maker than the festival, for two major reasons:

1) You will probably see one of the best pieces of theatre you will ever see, and it will give you something to aspire towards, something to hold your own work up against as the feelings you want to create with your show.

2) You will almost certainly see a piece of theatre that you think is absolutely awful, that you don’t get, that makes you question how it got to the festival, and it will give you something to beat. Importantly it will also give you things that you know you should not do.

These are both very good things. Conversation is critical to making good theatre, and you and anyone you talk to will probably disagree on your responses to points 1 and 2. You’ll discuss it in forums and at the cafe of whatever theatre your next workshop’s in (or on Facebook Live or Zoom), and come out of it with a more rounded view of what good theatre is and what it should be. Getting a show selected to go to NSDF feels like the award in and of itself; the idea that your piece of theatre is interesting and thought-provoking enough to be on a national stage and (hopefully) inspire a bunch of people to either aspire to the heights it creates or try to do better than it.

An awards ceremony then comes across as putting a full stop to those conversations. To declare a show as being ‘the best’ in a category, when no show is at the festival because it is ‘the best’ at any one thing, seems to miss the point. Someone will always feel missed out, there’ll always be a ‘but what about’ hanging over any set of awards, and while that does create and further conversation of its own it’s not the kind of conversation NSDF is about.

It leaves a sour note at the end of what is always an incredible, celebratory week where a couple hundred of the brightest, most enthusiastic student theatre-makers in the country get to exchange ideas among each other and among people who’ve been making theatre for a living, and I’m firmly in the camp that once NSDF returns next year bigger and better than ever before, the awards can keep their social distance (had to make at least one Covid reference, didn’t I).

@noffmag / noff@nsdf.org.uk

Latest from Noises Off

Latest from Noises Off

See all
NSDF 2023

Space to grow

13th June 2023

Imogen Usherwood interviews Selwin Hulme-Teague on the creative process behind Plant Gays.

Read More
NSDF 2023

How it felt to be 16

1st June 2023

Mailí Ní Ghormáin on an evocative work-in-progress from Big Creative Academy

Read More
NSDF 2023

we really might do it

30th May 2023

Julia Brookes on community, collaboration and conversation

Read More

Sign-up to our newsletter

Sign-up for our newsletter
Follow us
Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube
Contact Us Frequently Asked Questions Young Person Protection Policy Website Accessibility Privacy Policy
© NSDF Site by Grandad.digital
Sign-up to our newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date on all our upcoming events, information and news. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we process your data.