The National Drama Festival (NDF) of 2016 begins at the National Cultural Centre (NCC) today with the staging of plays in the preliminary round. These preliminaries continue until November 14, after which the festival moves into the finals which take off with the official opening on November 18 at the NCC.
This festival is unique in the Caribbean in that it is the only one with a concentration of so many dramatic plays at one venue for a period of more than three weeks. It is a national event, produced and administered by the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD), which is the responsible institution for training and promotion of theatre at a national level throughout the country. The NSTAD joins with the Unit of Allied Arts of the Ministry of Education for the participation of secondary schools in the NDF. For the second year, the biennial Schools Drama Festival has been incorporated into the NDF to merge with the Secondary Schools Category of the NDF so that there is now one annual competition and not two separate ones for schools as obtained up to 2014.
