The winners have been announced following the 2018 edition of Stagecoach Theatre Arts School’s popular Short Play Festival, which took place on September 7 at the Drama Unit Studio Theatre in Blata l-Bajda.

Lydia Davidson from UK-based theatre company Fearless Players with Mark Ciantar.Lydia Davidson from UK-based theatre company Fearless Players with Mark Ciantar.

Coordinated by Maxine Aquilina and led by resident director Lydia Davidson (of UK-based theatre company Fearless Players), the festival presented four one-act plays, each directed or performed by young people aged 13 to 17 – and put together in just five days of full-time rehearsals.

This year’s plays were: Ways to Screw Up an Interview, Action News, Fourteen, and Drugs Are Bad. They were judged by a panel of industry professionals, namely comedian and playwright Chris Dingli, actress and presenter Jo Caruana and actor Joseph Zammit.

The winners were Kyle Galea (Most Promising Male Actor); Martina Galea Loffreda (Most Promising Female Actor); Alexander Borg (Best Male Actor); Julia Schembri (Best Female Actor); Mark Ciantar (Best Director); Ways to Screw up an Interview, adapted from the play 13 Ways to Screw up an Interview by Ian Mcwethy (Best Production, directed by Mark Ciantar, with Hannah Attard, Martina Galea Loffreda, Catti Nicholas and Alexander Borg) and Drugs are Bad by Jonathan Rand, directed by Gabriel Camilleri, with Maria Bonaci, Adriel Camilleri, Morgan Zammit and Kyle Galea (People’s Choice Award).

Speaking at the end of the festival, Ms Davidson, who flew to Malta especially for the initiative, said: “It was so wonderful to watch these students blossom into their roles over the course of this week-long festival, whether they were directing, acting, helping with the set or getting involved in the technical side of things. I was so impressed by the results. They put on four fantastic shows for everyone in the audience this evening!”

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