Next Saturday is the Hornsea Speech and Drama Festival in East Yorkshire. Every year we enter the members of our Junior and Youth sections for various classes and they compete against young performers across the area for trophies and certificates. It gives them a chance to be adjudicated by a professional and hopefully improve the skills we have tried to encourage in them. Most of the children enter, with only rare occasions when members drop out at the last minute, and it is a very enjoyable, if not at times stressful, day for us all. It starts at 9am and finishes about 5.30pm. I am in the middle of copying the programme for each child and highlighting the clases and times that they are needed, but I know full well that on the day this will not stop the almost constant barrage of “When am I on next?” “What’s next?” “Am I before Amber/Laura/Sam” etc etc. Each year we go, we spend most of the time wondering why and the rest of the time feeling proud of our youngsters!
Trophies are held by the winners in each category for one year – Keith and I actually won a trophy last year for “Outstanding contribution to the Hornsea Speech & Drama Festival”, which was a lovely surprise for us! We have been taking the children there for the past 9 years and I think without the members from BADS, the festival would not exist, so they are probably grateful for our input!
I will report back with the results next weekend. We are having extra rehearsals this afternoon from 2 till 5.30pm so hopefully they will all be ready for it by Saturday!
