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.”

A North Oxfordshire theatre group has won the 2019 Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays with a chilling “Orwellian” drama about an employer brainwashing a young female employee.

The play, “Contractions” by Mike Bartlett, portrays a young saleswoman, Emma, played by Almira Brion, who has her life and eventually her mind taken over by her boss. The all-female two-hander features a convincingly robotic performance from Nicola Dixon as the firm’s HR manager.

The Banbury Cross Players’ winning production was directed by Chrissie Garrett and produced by June Ronson.

As a result of winning the Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays, the production been selected for the National Drama Festivals Association’s British All-Winners Finals which will be held in Woking, Surrey, in July 2019.

BCP were given a score of 87 out of a possible 100 by adjudicator Mike Kaiser, a member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators.

They just pipped the Black Country Hollybush Arts Group from Cradley Heath who scored 86 to take second place.

Ginny Davis from Wellesbourne came third with a one-woman show, in which she plays eight parts, and in fourth place was the Caramba Theatre Company of Stratford-on-Avon. Caramba were the Lighthorne Festival’s inaugural winners in 2013.

All the top four groups scored over 80, which is considered to be the GoDA benchmark of excellence.

Rod Chaytor, Chairman of The Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays, said: “Banbury Cross Players were the very first group to sign up to the idea of a Lighthorne Festival when we first began to canvass quality local theatre groups back in 2012, and we will always be grateful for that initial support.

“In addition, they are one of only three teams to have entered every Lighthorne Festival since its inception in 2013, and we are therefore doubly grateful to them for their ongoing loyalty.

“It was therefore an absolute delight to see them take the Lighthorne Trophy this year and with a production which merited it, one hundred percent.

“Part of our founding ethos was that we wanted to see good local groups learn and grow from each other by virtue of the Lighthorne Festival, and, to their great credit, BCP have done exactly that. It has been a pleasure to watch them develop over the last six years. The Director, Chrissie Garrett, had clearly put hours of work into planning and preparation and had paid huge attention to detail. The two actors performed their roles brilliantly. It was a a great show.

“We are thrilled that BCP have now been selected for the National Drama Festival Association’s British All-Winners Finals in Woking next month. We will be there to support them, and wish them every good fortune in their attempt to become national champions.”

Local groups dominate the Running Order for this year’s Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays, which will take place between Tuesday June 4 and Saturday June 8, 2019, in Lighthorne Village Hall.

The competition, which boasts the biggest prize in British amateur theatre, has in the past attracted touring groups from as far afield as Anglesey and Cambridge. This year, however, all 12 entrants come from within an hour’s drive of the South Warwickshire village, which will be hosting its seventh annual event this year.

Of those, nine are from Warwickshire, including five from Stratford. Two more are from north Oxfordshire, close to the Warwickshire border, and the twelfth is from Cradley Heath in the BlackCountry. Five groups are new to the Lighthorne Festival. Eight groups will be performing new work.

Festival Committee chair Rod Chaytor said:”It’s great that in the past this still-new Festival has attracted some of the top amateur theatre groups from across the country, as it will again, but I am delighted that this year the prize must go to someone fairly local to our venue.”

The Lighthorne Festival has a £1,000 first prize which, under Festival rules, must be divided equally between the winning group and a registered charity of their choice. The winners also take home a handsome, theirs-to-keep engraved glass trophy.