Banbury Cross Players’ sound technician Robin Williams receives the Backstage Award from NDFA Patron Sir Derek Jacobi, flanked by adjudicator Jill Colby, GoDA, who also awarded the Best Actor prize jointly to BCP’s Nicola Dixon and Almira Brion.
The Lighthorne drama festival’s 2019 winners have picked up two trophies at the British All-Winners Finals.
Nicola Dixon and Almira Brion jointly won the Adjudicators’ Prize for Best Actor.
Their group, Banbury Cross Players from Banbury, North Oxfordshire, also took the Backstage Award, voted for by the week-long Festival’s permanent crew independently of the adjudicator, for the team they most enjoyed working with.
The double success comes as the Banbury group prepares for their 75th anniversary celebrations next year.
The pair performed the chilling Orwellian drama “Contractions” by Mike Bartlett, in which young saleswoman Emma, played by Almira Brion, gradually finds her life and eventually her mind taken over in the interests of “business efficiency” by her ruthless female Manager, played by Nicola Dixon.
Adjudicator Jill Colby, a member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators, said:”They both had to be so different, but also a team, working off each other, which they did brilliantly. It was impossible to separate the two actors. It had to be a joint award.”
The play, when it won in Lighthorne in June, was directed by Chrissie Garrett who then left to fulfil a long-standing family engagement in Australia, and handed the directorial reigns to producer June Ronson who oversaw its transfer onto the much-larger professional stage at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre in Woking, Surrey, for the British Finals.
On the last night, the awards were both collected onstage by the play’s sound technician, Robin Williams, from the hands of NDFA Patron and theatrical knight Sir Derek Jacobi.
Since it first launched seven short years ago, Lighthorne Festival nominees have won places in every NDFA British Final and picked up virtually every national award open to them, including best production, best new script, and now best actor and the backstage award.
Rod Chaytor, Lighthorne Festival chair, said:” We were in the audience to support on the night Banbury performed and again on the final night when they were handed their richly-deserved prizes. We could not be more thrilled for them.”