Drama St Mary’s Welcomes Five Professional Directors for Annual T Junction Festival

The St Mary’s University, Twickenham campus will once again become a hub for drama talent this October, as the fifth Annual T Junction Festival takes place in the Drama St Mary’s Theatre, each production will also this year benefit from the guidance of a professional director.

Over just ten days from 30^th October to the 8^th November 2017, Drama St Mary’s will feature five productions, showcasing the talent of St Mary’s final year drama students.

 This year those supporting the festival include Jesse Jones, current member of the Old Vic 12 where he is developing two new shows. Jesse has recently finished as Resident Director at Royal and Derngate, Northampton, where he won the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme award. 

Other directors lined up for the festival include: Ellen Havard, who has extensive experience in developing outreach and participation programmes and worked for National Theatre Learning, and whose Staff Director credits include Young, Jonathan Kent, National Theatre, in July 2016; and Madelaine Moore, an arts practitioner and freelance theatre director, specialising in developing new writing, and founder and Artistic Director of The Thelmas, a new writing company committed to discovering and developing female writers.

The two directors making up the full complement of five are: Rebecca Hill, former Director in Residence at the Almeida Theatre, Award-winning playwright whose work has been seen at Edinburgh Fringe Festival; and Glynne Steele, 
actor, workshop leader, and emerging director. A current St Mary’s Visiting Lecturer, Glynne also most recently directed ‘Empty Beds’ a double award-winning new play by Julia Cranney.

Patsy Gilbert, St Mary’s Academic Director for Drama commented, “This is another fantastic line up for our T Junction Festival which grows in strength year upon year.

 “We are always looking for ways to expose our students to individuals who are creating exciting and innovative work in the professional world – I know our students benefit from working with these directors greatly. We welcome Jesse, Ellen, Maddy, Rebecca and Glynne to Drama St Mary’s and can’t wait to see final productions.”

Plays running over the course of the festival are:

• Never had a dream come true, directed by Jesse Jones;
• Lysistrata; the sex strike, written by Germaine Greer, directed by Ellen Harvard;
• Widows, written by Ariel Dorfman, directed by Madelaine Moore, with movement direction from Charlotte Maltby;
• Basset, written by James Graham and directed by Rebecca Hill;
• Revolt. She said. Revolt Again, written by Alice Birch, directed by Glynne Steele

For more information regarding ticket sales, please visit: dramastmarysreservations.weebly.com. 

Patsy Gilbert added: “Last year, our final year students produced exciting, vibrant performance across a wide range of performance material and we’re sure this year will be no different.

“For my team and I, it will be a great opportunity to see the 30 hours a week we dedicate to each of our students here, across 30 weeks of the year, pay off.”

St Mary’s offers a variety of undergraduate programmes, including BA Acting and BA Technical Theatre, in additional to its flagship MA Theatre Directing programme, run in collaboration with Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, unique to any institution in the UK.

The University underpins its academic courses with a particular focus on technical skill, all driven by a team of experts across all aspects of theatre.