OTTC Strike Terror, But Win Favour at Festival

OTTC’s support for PlayWrite, the competition to write an original short play and have it performed by us in the Harold Jolliffe One-Act Play Festival, has once again resulted in success.

Our performance of Autumn Terror, by Jon Nash, a dramatic piece based on the infamous and gruesome occurrences in London at the time Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets, won the following awards:

• The Swindon Advertiser Award for an original production
• The Audrey Suter Trophy for best adult performance by an actor
• The Audrey Suter Trophy went to Jeremy Smith for his performance as Doctor Brown.

Director Julian Smith was delighted with the performance, which took place at the Arts Centre on Thursday 22 February.

Director's Review

The cast and crew of Autmn Terror

Directing the PlayWrite winner - Autumn Terror by Jon Nash - for the Harold Jolliffe One Act Play Festival 2007 is surprisingly different from directing a full-length play for a regular run. Time is against you, so every moment of every rehearsal is precious. Usually, while you know the end point from the outset, you have some control as a director over the start point, but with PlayWrite it's out of your hands. And, when you agree to be involved as a director and theatre company in the PlayWrite competition, you don't have any control over which play you will perform.

This year, we were lucky that the listeners of BBC Radio Swindon and BBC Radio Wiltshire, and the readers of the Swindon Advertiser voted for such a strong play as Autumn Terror. If anything, it was too good – as a full length play, we spent the first two weeks agonising over which lines to cut to get it down to a length that would meet the rules of the Harold Jolliffe Festival. (Each entry must have a running time of no more than 55 minutes.) This did help us all to know and understand the play, so it was time well spent. It was also a relief when the author, Jon Nash, emailed me with his stamp of approval over the cuts we'd made.

With such a short rehearsal period, I had hoped that each two-hour session would give us chance to go through the whole play twice. In practice, that wasn't feasible, due to the requirement to spend time discussing props, furniture and costumes.

But my actors all put in the time to learn their lines, with weeks to spare – something that is often a struggle to achieve in our full-sized productions; clearly, the extra pressure of the short rehearsal period was galvanising for them, too. This was especially true for Jane Dale, who took over her role with only two weeks to go and performed seamlessly well on the night.

More silverware for OTTC: the Swindon Advertiser Award for an Original Production

At our last full rehearsal, two days before the final show, I got to see the full glory of the costumes. Wow! The casual decision of Sue Carr, early on, to say “yes, I can help out with some of the costumes" ended up with a great deal of work in her own time that gave a look and feel that was genuinely Victorian. The acting, too, gave me a warm feeling that we would do a really good job with the script, and cap the whole PlayWrite odyssey, with some style. If only I could get the door built, working and painted in time for the production...

So how did the production itself go?

As an aspirant perfectionist, I take pride in my cast that not one thing they did made me cringe. (Plenty of things made me cringe, but they were all down to me. If only I hadn't insisted that speech needed to be delivered from there… If only I'd been able to get that door working...).

It looked and sounded great – the actors fully inhabited their roles, adding final touches here and there that made me smile. There were some outstanding individual moments, but more than that, it was a terrific ensemble piece and I'm really proud of all the actors and the stage crew for making such a good piece of theatre. The adjudicator, Michael Patterson, said that there was no weak link in the cast, and he was absolutely right.

Overall, I would say that we more than justified the decision to take part in the PlayWrite competition for its second year. The size of the challenge would make any company shy away from it – we were the only group to put ourselves forward this time around – but it's such a valuable and satisfying way to put on a play that I'd recommend the experience to any theatre group. PlayWrite isn't just theatre (and radio); it's theatre on a high wire. While juggling flaming torches. Without a safety net...

OTTC are tough enough to take it. Are you?

Julian Smith, Director

Judges' Marks