July 18th 2022 saw the opening of the National Drama Festival (NDFA) in Coventry, which showcases the very best of British amateur groups who take part in a week-long festival. Every year the winners of drama festivals around the country take part to compete for a wide range of awards, including best one-act play, best youth play, and best actor and best youth actor. Here at Limitless Academy we are very proud of the fact that we have won Best Youth One-Act Play twice before with Teechers in 2019 and Private Peaceful in 2021. This year we tried something different and came with an original written play - Brook For Nothing by Paul Adam Levy and directed by Peter Heppelthwaite. We qualified for the NDFA by winning the Welwyn Garden City Youth Festival in April 2022. We had a successful tour of Brook For Nothing at a number of drama festivals, including finishing second at the Waltham Forest adult festival, and winning Best Youth Actor for Will Muir (playing Brook) at the Totten Festival. Brook For Nothing was performed on July 20th 2022 and went on to win two Youth awards, including best Youth Play and best actor for Kyle Gould (playing Fraginator_69). This is the second time in a row Kyle won best actor after winning it for Private Peaceful the year before. This meant Limitless Academy won the Best Youth One-Act Play for a third year in a row at the National Finals! We also performed our award-winning production of John Godber's Teechers. This production had won the Youth Festival in 2019, but this year, with a new cast and some new ideas, we entered Teechers into the Adults category after winning the Henley Drama Festival in May 2022. We are very proud to take third place with a young cast and the performance won director Peter Heppelthwaite the award for Outstanding Contribution to the Festival. All of the cast used for our entries are students of Limitless Academy and are enrolled in our youth drama classes and adult acting classes. Full list of our awards and nominations at the 2022 NDFA Finals
NDFA Youth Trophy: Youth One-Act Winner - Brook For Nothing
Buxton Trophy: Best Youth Actor - Kyle Gould as Fraginator_69 (Brook For Nothing)
Best Youth Actor Nomination - William Muir as Brook (Brook For Nothing)
Best Youth Actor Nomination - Theo Brignall as Querous/Willis (Brook For Nothing)
One-Act Adult Third Place - Teechers
John Scowen Award: Best Comedy Moment - Entire Cast of Teechers
Michael Less: Best Actor Nomination - Theo Brignall as Mr Nixon (Teechers)
Felixton Festival Trophy: Outstanding Festival Contribution - Peter Heppelthwaite (Teechers)