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We are often asked : "Why do you have a New Plays Festival?" "Why not try to find one really good new play and put it on for a run? If you try to find three, two of them are bound to be rotten!"
Such questions miss the whole point of the Festival, which is to create an opportunity for presenting new plays in an attractive and acceptable context. The fact that the Questors hold this annual Festival and have done so now for nine years, means that playwrights, knowing this opportunity exists, are encouraged to send us their plays. It means that at times we are able to commission new plays. (Look at the list of plays below—a number of them, including some of the most successful, would never have been written if it had not been for the Festival). It provides a real and positive encouragement to new writing for the theatre.
And for the audience, too, it provides something of a new experience, adventurous and exciting. But to get the full flavour, come to all the plays and then come to the popular discussions after the end of each performance. You don't have to join in, but whatever you have thought of the play, it is interesting to find out whether others agree or disagree with you, and why.
Souvenir Programme
Theatrical personalities leading the after show discussions included:
Kitty Black, Ronald Bryden, Martin Esslin, James Forsyth, Richard Graham, Lionel Hale, Owen Holder, Leo Lehman, Robert Rietty, John Russell Taylor, Michael Warre, Hugh Willatt
Fringe Events at this Festival included:
AN ANATOMIE OF HORROR!
An entertainment consisting of ghostly tales, eerie songs, excerpts from macabre plays and black verse, designed to delight all those who enjoy having their hair stood on end and their flesh made to creep.
Directed by Alan Chambers
Cast
Carla Field, Sandra Healy, Mary Jones, Don Kincaid, Bill Rudderham, Ted Scrivener
HORROR UPON HORROR AT THE QUESTORS!
The Middlesex County Times
JAZZ AT THE QUESTORS
John Rolfe and his group of jazzmen
THE POET IN PERSON
A reading of poetry, from their latest books, by Dannie Abse, Alan Brownjohn and Anthony Thwaite.
ART EXHIBITION
An exhibition of Theatre posters from East Germany. The exhibition had already aroused considerable interest having been presented at the Mermaid Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse and Glasgow Citizens Theatre.