Festival opens young minds to live performance

A festival of live performance has provided an "enlightening" opportunity for hundreds of teenagers, its organisers said.

The INK Youth Festival, which returned on Monday for its fourth year, saw some 250 secondary school pupils from across Suffolk and Norfolk watch a series of free short plays at venues across Halesworth.

It followed on from the four-day INK Festival, which saw 70 new performances this year.

Helen Atkinson Wood, a patron of INK Festival, said: "Anyone can write a play and anyone can perform a play, and so this is an opportunity to give everyone a taste for it."

The main festival, held from 16-19 April, saw screenwriter Richard Curtis and novelist Esther Freud both premiere new plays, but the INK Youth Festival was focused on inspiring the next generation.

The event saw everyday buildings in the town transformed into vibrant theatre spaces, from scout huts to pub function rooms - each used to stage an original play.

Organisers billed the festival as the "world's biggest carnival of short plays", and students from Broadland High Ormiston Academy were among those impressed by this year's event.

Joshua, a Year 9 pupil, said: "I've always wanted to do something in the drama area, whether it be script writing, acting, or prop making. I would love to be part of an acting area."

Year 7 student Layla said: "I've seen a lot of variety of things, some romances, some comedy and some sci-fi. It's been very inspiring."

Jonny Howard, head of drama at Broadland High Ormiston Academy, said: "We've been here two or three hours, seen eight performances, met countless different actors, different directors, different writers.

"It's just brilliant. It's one of the only ones [theatre events] in our region that's available completely free to schools, and I think that's the most important bit."

Actors at the event give their time for free, and organisers said the 15-minute plays could help show the power of theatre to a new generation.

"We know that for many it's been life-changing," Julia Sowerbutts, artistic director of INK Festival, said.

"It isn't that they [the children attending] want to be a director or writer or a technician... some may, but it's just enlightening [them]."

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