Awards and judging
With a $1900 prize pool, prizes will be awarded for Outstanding Play Performance, Outstanding Actor and Youth Actor Encouragement.
The One Act Play festival is conducted in contest form with a panel of suitably qualified judges who have expertise and experience in the performing arts. The judges will not confer about the plays or actors before they have given their final rankings.
Award for Outstanding Play Performance
All performances will be reviewed based on the following artistic elements:
- Characterisation
- Plot
- Dialogue
- Overall effect.
Awards for Outstanding Actor and Youth Actor Encouragement
All performances will be reviewed based on the following criteria:
- Role identification
- Vocal expression
- Spontaneity
- Vitality
- Actor contacts
- Emotional believability
- Ease and definiteness
- Bodily expression
- Project
- Spirit.
An actor cannot win more than one award.
Our judges
Victor Kalka
Victor is a freelance designer and director. In 2019 Victor established the indie theatre company Virginia Plain that debuted with a new adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Select credits include:
Director: Grain in the Blood, Chef, The Pitchfork Disney, Twelfth Night [heads or tails], The Cherry Orchard (Virginia Plain); Radiant Vermin (Studio Sputnik) The Merry Wives of Windsor (New Theatre); A Delicate Balance (Sydney Classic Theatre Co.); Brothers Karamazov, Tender Indifference, and Red Cross (Arrive. Devise. Repeat.); Constellations (Chippen Street Theatre); Titus and The Seagull (SUDS); and Cowboy Mouth (Backspace Theatre).
Designer: Ear to the Edge of Time (Sport for Jove); Things I Know to be True, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Once in Royal David’s City (New Theatre); Wit (Clock and Spiel Productions); Fuente Ovejuna!, Ditch (Dream Plane); Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Montague Basement); The Street of Crocodiles and Image of an Unknown Young Woman (AFTT); A Westerner’s Guide to the Opium Wars (35 Square); Antigone and Wyrd (Ninefold).
Training: B.Perf Australian Institute of Music, and B.A. University of Sydney.
Jo Bloom
Jo Bloom is an actor and producer, and founder of Come You Spirits.
Jo has worked as an actress, director, producer, educator and playwright in Sydney, Melbourne and London and across the UK. Her passion for Shakespeare and classical theatre has seen her perform in principal roles in over 20 productions, including to critical acclaim as Hedda in Hedda Gabler and Rosalind in As You Like It.
She joined the Australian Shakespeare Company in 2009 performing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth and set up the education program for them performing in all Victorian and NSW school incursions. She has performed and toured in leading roles playing at the Minnak Theatre UK, the Edinburgh Festival, the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and has also worked with the British Shakespeare Company on their national tour. Jo wrote, produced and toured the live children’s show Alphabet Avenue across Victoria and Sydney, which developed into the TV series The McKenzie Sunshine Show currently shooting with AI Films Studio for international release in 2024.
Actor and producer - Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra, Nurse in Romeo & Juliet, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Caliban in The Tempest and Titania/Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Charles Mayer
Charles Mayer is an actor and producer, and founder of Come You Spirits.
Charles is an English actor who has lived and worked in Australia since 2012. After 11 years as a British Army officer, Charles received a degree in acting from Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. He has worked on stage in the West End, in Shanghai for four years, and in Adelaide for six years. While in Adelaide he worked in three shows with the State Theatre Company of South Australia. He also worked on two shows with Pop-Up Globe in Auckland, and one show at the Old Fitz.
His most recent work is the feature film FiveKRadius with Marcus Graham in Sydney, and The Wind in The Willows with The Australian Shakespeare Company in Melbourne.
Actor and producer - Antony in Antony & Cleopatra, Friar Lawrence in Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth in Macbeth, Prospero in The Tempest and Oberon/Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream.