Director of the winning plays in
2007 and 2008 Pete Gallagher

Lee Mead can thank Pete Gallagher for winning Any Dream Will Do. As a drama teacher and actor who had played Caiaphas in the West End production of Jesus Christ Superstar, his job as drama coach on the TV series was to make the contestants perform the songs.
“It came to a head about three weeks before the end of the series,” Pete recalled. “Lee Mead was going to sing the song Paint It Black, which I directed as a theatre piece, and he was really quite scared. I told him, if you get this right you will win the series. He did get it right and Bill Kenwright said it was the finest interpretation he had ever heard.
“That got me into TV coaching and I did Strictly Come Dancing when good old Len Goodman called me a miracle worker, and I’ve been coaching ballroom dancers ever since. I do passion workshops, and with my normal acting stuff it gives them the edge they need. They say it makes all the difference.”
If Pete - who has also coached The Gladiators to express themselves as their characters - sounds big-headed, he most certainly isn’t. He’s 6 ft 7 ins worth of fun and warmth, with no side to him whatsoever. But he is a man driven by his own passion for the theatre. “I’ve been interested in the arts for as long as I can remember,” said the father of two who originally hails from Middlesbrough, the son of a cleaner and bingo caller who ended up legal manager of Coca Cola Southern Britain before retiring to set up a chain of nurseries, and an underwriter who brought his family to London.
“When I was five-years-old my teacher told my mother I was something special and gave me leading roles. My mother thought every parent was told that and ignored it, but it snowballed and when I wanted to go to drama college my parents paid for me. The bizarre thing is that my dad always said I would get a proper job one day; that it was my mother’s fault because she had a sister who used to sing a bit. But my dad’s cousin was a successful drama teacher whose son is the screenwriter Andrew Davies, so that whole thing comes from my dad’s side.”
Pete trained at the Corona Stage Academy in Chiswick and later taught there, while still performing in the evenings, and became its headmaster for 18 months until it was sold in 1988. His first big break as an actor was playing The Big Bopper in Buddy at the Victoria Palace - which began 14 years in London’s West End, in shows such as Doctor Doolittle, The Rocky Horror Show, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - which not only almost ended his career but his life. As The Inventor he was wearing a hair cutting machine on his head when it exploded. “If it hadn’t been built round an old German war helmet I would have had permanent damage. Both ears were perforated and I was suffering enormous shock but I was being shouted at to go back on stage and I found that very hard to accept. I’m not blaming anyone. I accept they had a job to do, but it made me re-evaluate everything.” And so, four or five years ago, he decided to take every directing job that was going, and that’s when he came across the Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing. “It happened just at the right time, I just wanted to direct anything and everything, and we won with The Last Laugh. Last year, when I found out Kenneth Branagh was one of the judges and I was directing Fairy Lights, I thought if he was half the man I thought he was he would vote for it and he did. The writing stood out, which was very odd because I did not know I had any talent for spotting good writing.”
He has declined to take part this year, however. “Having won the last two years I think I’m on a hiding to nothing,” he confessed. “It was a lovely experience and I think the awards is a fantastic idea. I write plays myself and it’s very difficult to get anywhere. Your confidence is shattered… so the idea of meeting people and helping them and introducing them and getting their work on stage is wondrous, a glorious feeling.
“And I love the fact that it is so well supported, that it gets good people involved every year. America builds platforms to celebrate people but one of the things that upsets me most about this country is that we build them to shoot them off. We should be celebrating new talent, but we don’t like what we don’t know. We are not good at celebrating other people but people should be encouraged and nurtured and helped because this is where we’ll find the next Tom Stoppard. And that’s why these festivals are great.”

Empowered with the good will which surrounds Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing, one of Pete’s latest projects is Anthony Newley - The Fool Who Dared to Dream, a show about the late, great Anthony Newley which has already caught the attention of a West End director. Another of his creations is The Brothers’ Lionheart, based on the Swedish children’s fantasy novel, which is going to the Edinburgh Fringe and on a national tour after having been tried out in London. Meanwhile, Pete the actor is currently spending four months at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Having performed in the comedy Moonlight and Magnolias until the end of June, he is now in Pirates of Penzance until the end of August.

The director of the 2006 overall winner of The Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing, Don’t Open the Door by Richard Roques, Mark Holliday has a passion for the theatre and writes and directs with The CentreStage Partnership, a company providing actors and facilitators with learning and development programmes (www.centrestage-roleplay.com)

Mark’s previous directing credits include Twelfth Night and An Inspector Calls, as well as a very successful touring adaptation of The Railway Children with the Phoenix Theatre Company, Blackeyed Theatre’s critically acclaimed 2004 production of Effie’s Burning, and Dennis Potter‘s Blue Remembered Hills.

On stage, his many roles include Petey in The Birthday Party, Eric in Ten Times Table (Backstage Theatre Company), Juror No 12 in Twelve Angry Men (Sideline Theatre Company), Davies in Blackeyed Theatre’s production of The Caretaker, Henry Hobson in Hobson’s Choice and Macduff in Macbeth.

Barry McCormick comes from a theatrical background: his grandfather, father and mother were all actors.

He went to RADA where he realised he was not quite as talented as his fellow students, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, and after a spell in rep in Wimbledon he ventured into films and ended up at Pinewood, Elstree, Soho and Shepperton Studios as an editor and dubbing editor in the cuttings room.

Barry has directed more than 35 productions, mainly for the Windsor Theatre Guild, starting with Murder Mistaken, and progressing through classical, modern and award-winning Windsor Festival plays, many outdoor and indoor Shakespeare plays and WTG’s first musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be.

He has also directed for the Richings Players, the Slough Music Theatre Company and Equus for the Cookham Arts Festival.

From directing the Royal National Theatre Young Company in a collaborative project for the Thames Festival, and international tours, winning a Perrier Award nomination for stand-up comedy, to working extensively with new writers through the London Playwrights Collective, and teaching and directing at various drama schools, Francis Watson has worked across the theatrical gamut, also embracing opera, Commedia and Shakespeare.

He has developed work with companies such as Trestle, Complicite and Horse and Bamboo; and as co-artistic director of Theatre Pouquoi Pas, has directed six international tours of new musicals.

In opera, Francis has directed La Boheme (Handmade Opera), and was staff director of The Barber of Seville (Garden Opera). He was assistant director of the world premiere of Lontano Productions’ Spirit Child; The Bear with Hull Sinfonietta; was youth theatre director at the Union Chapel, and has directed the Royal National Theatre Young Company in a collaborative project for the Thames Festival with Melbourne’s Snuff Puppets, the Unicorn Theatre and the International Workshop Festival.

His work with new writers has taken place at Theatre 503, Brockley and Wandsworth Literary Festival, while Getting Out, a play he directed for the London Fringe, received four-star reviews. Francis studied Le Coq Technique under Monika Pagneux in Metz and won a Perrier Nomination for his comedy stand-up work, performing as a deranged Freddie Mercury escaping Planet Earth in a robot brain, and George Michael parading through Yorkshire in underpants made of pipe lagging (Channel 4 Comedy Lab).

On TV he starred in a doomed comedy pilot about the domestic life of pop dinosaurs Depeche Mode.

Donald Sturrock

Donald Sturrock, who directed Debbie Giggle’s A Bed to Die For, one of 2005’s three winners,  joined the BBC in 1983 where he made more than 30 documentary films for the Music and Arts Department including The Graham Greene Trilogy for BBC2’s Arena series, which the Broadcasting Writers Guild voted Best Documentary of the Year.
He left the BBC in 1992 and since then his credits as a director include Little Red Riding Hood with Danny DeVito, Ian Holm and Julie Walters; a four-part television series with Placido Domingo; the Grammy award nominated Art of Piano and the world premiere of the opera Fantastic Mr Fox in Los Angeles.
He is currently working on a new opera project for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Joerg Stadler, who realised a major ambition when he made his directing debut with Shirley Knight’s All’s Fair, one of the winners of the 2007 drama awards, is a highly gifted actor who has worked with some of the world’s best directors, including Steven Spielberg, Guy Richie, Tony Scott and Peter Webber.
Joerg trained at the famous Lee Strasbourg studio.
His credits include Berndt in Hannibal Rising; Steamboat Willy in Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks, and the prisoner in Revolver, as well as Schmidt in Spy Game with Brad Pitt and the new Hannibal Lecter prequel Young Hannibal.
He has also played the lead role in dozens of short films, theatre and television and is a keen supporter of new film and theatre talent. He has huge experience in voice-overs, mime, street theatre and public awareness films.
Recently, he has been working with award-winning producer Shane Davey (who directed Nadia Al Yafai’s winning Café Cinderella in 2006) on two music videos - one for UK Urban act Shack and the other for rock ‘n’ roll band Negritia, which is currently touring film festivals in the UK.

Peter-Frank De Wulf

Peter-Frank Dewulf, who directed Jill Bristow’s The Muddy Pool, one of the winners of the 2007 drama awards, and Rupert Haigh’s The People’s Act of Literature, one of last year’s three winners, has directed plays, short films and corporate videos which have won several awards such as the New Directors Showcase for Saatchi & Saatchi Belgium 2009 and the Kodak Student Commercial Award in 1999.

His journey in the world of media started at the age of 13 when he joined his school’s photography club. In order to expand his exploration of the ‘captured image‘, he continued his studies with photography and later film directing at the Arts Academy in Ghent, Belgium, where he gained a Kanidatuur in Film and Animation. In 1999 he moved to the UK where he completed his education with a BA Hons, also in Film and Animation, and an HNC in Photography at The Arts Institute in Bournemouth in 2002.

Since then Peter-Frank has directed several music videos, idents and short films with a company called Davey Inc which was nominated for the prestigious National Business Awards in 2005. His latest short film Mr Jones has been selected for the Liquid Room, Video-Art & Architecture Event and selected by Saatchi & Saatchi Belgium for their New Directors Showcase 2009.

Having now branched out into the theatre, Peter-Frank has also directed plays for the Lost Festival in London where The Muddy Pool received a superb review from Jeremy Kingston of The Times. He is also a regular script-reader for the Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing. Before becoming a director Peter-Frank worked extensively in the world of TV, starting in the location and production departments for various high profile TV programmes including Sugar Rush 2 for Channel 4, which won an Emmy Award in 2006, and Harry & Paul for the BBC, which won the Comedy BAFTA Award in 2009.

He now also passes on his knowledge as a regular guest lecturer for ‘light and lighting for film’ at the Artevelde Hogeschool in Belgium.

Lorna Pearson-Hall, who directed one of last year’s three winners, Young Shakspeer by Andy Gittins, was Lorna Casey when she began her theatrical career at the age of 14, playing the role of Marie Terese in the professional previews of the musical Bernadette. She went on to study musical theatre at Laine Theatre Arts and then Speech and Drama at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Lorna has worked on a variety of professional and amateur musicals and plays as a performer, choreographer and director. She has particularly enjoyed exploring a diverse wealth of material and has played in and directed a variety of professional and amateur productions, from Euripedes to Sondheim.
When she had her children, Lorna gave up the professional stage and now works as an English and drama teacher at Cox Green School, Maidenhead, Berkshire, as well as a drama adjudicator and GCSE and A Level examiner. Lorna was most recently seen playing the role of Lady Macbeth in Windsor Theatre Guild’s outdoor production of Macbeth.

Sisters Annie Keen and Mary Simpson co-directed Anne Picken’s winning Coup de Grace in the first ever Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing in 2004.
Annie’s involvement with drama started at the age of 12 at Toynbee Hall’s Saturday drama club in London‘s East End. She learnt her trade there with the other students who included Tom Courtenay, Anita Dobson, Henry Goodman and George Innes. They wrote plays, put on fabulous productions and got involved in street theatre. Later, Annie joined local amateur dramatic societies, won awards and, after 20 years with The Quince Players in Sunninghill, Berkshire, achieved a director’s diploma.
Mary is vice-president of The Quince Players and has a drama direction diploma. She is also an actor and stage manager, and has co-directed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War.
She has also had poetry and a short story published, is writing a novel, and is about to start a full-time Creative Writing course.