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Durham Drama Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary

20 November 2024
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A graphic reading 'Durham Drama Festival' and showing the dates for 2025

This annual festival of new student writing for theatre will launch celebrations to mark its 50th year in 2025.

Between Sunday 16 – Saturday 22 February 2025, Durham Drama Festival (DDF), hosted by our student-led theatre organisation, Durham Student Theatre, will stage nine pieces of new work across three of the best venues at Durham University. These will sit alongside a special programme of events for DDF’s golden anniversary, including expert panels offering professional industry advice and mentoring.

The 2025 programme – come along!

Mount Oswald Hub, the Mark Hillery Arts Centre, and the Sir Thomas Allen Assembly Rooms Theatre in Durham City will play host to our budding theatre writers and their creations. Audiences can look forward to a scratch night of comedy and short drama, a series of ‘late-night’ comedy gigs, and an exhibition celebrating the history of the Festival and our wider student theatre scene. There will also be an awards evening at the end of the week.

Why not join in with the festival buzz by coming along to enjoy the programme and support the wide range of emerging talent on display? Keep an eye out for details of the week!

A pathway to success

DDF serves as a pathway programme. It offers development and further performance opportunities for our student-writers and other aspiring theatre practitioners to have their work seen by the community, their peers and industry experts. It provides a focal point, bringing regional and national eyes onto the hotbed of writing talent we have at Durham University.

In 2024, of the six productions programmed, four transferred both to the wider National Student Drama Festival (NSDF), or onto fringe festivals across the United Kingdom, such as the Durham Fringe Festival and world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe. A notable win was for student director Emily Browning who won the Buzz Goodbody Prize at NSDF 2024 for her direction of play Love and Freindship by Zara Stokes-Neustadt.

Student opportunities

There are scores of roles available for our current students to get involved with, both on and off stage in the nine companies currently being put together. Opportunities are available in acting, directing, producing or technical backstage roles. Further information on these can be found here.

DDF alumni

To mark DDF’s half-century milestone, Durham Student Theatre would love to gather and celebrate the Festival’s 50-year history as experienced by its alumni. If you have been involved in DDF previously, and would like to share your memories or explore avenues to get involved, the society would love to hear from you at [email protected].

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