Theatre award meeting held

Manama : The second technical meeting for the Khalid bin Hamad Youth Theatre Award Festival for National Clubs, Youth Centres and People with Disabilities was held on Monday, at Muharraq Model Youth Centre.

The meeting was attended by Jamal Al Ghailan, the director of the festival, Abdullah Sweid, the Chairman of the Evaluation Committee and Hisham Bukhamas, the Director of the Muharraq Youth Centre Model.

The festival will be held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, First Deputy President of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, Honourary President of Bahrain Disabled Sports Federation, organised by the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs in cooperation with the media office of His Highness Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa under the slogan #painting_a_smile. The festival comes under the generous initiatives of His Highness in supporting youth in the cultural and humanitarian fields.

The management of the festival announced that the scripts for the Accompanying events are to be delivered on July 1 and the evaluation committee will start its work on August 20. The selection will see only 12 teams perform at the festival, while 25 August will set a final date for the qualifiers. The preliminaries will be under Jamal Al Ghailan, director of the festival and the Evaluation Committee headed by Abdullah Sweid.

The organising Committee also announced that the eligible age of the participants had been set to a maximum of 35 years. Otherwise, the participation would be honourary, while age does include roles such as the director, the author and other elements that are not related to acting.

The latest regulatory issues related to the preparation the festival and Accompanying events were explained, especially the increase in the percentage of the support allocated to the participants by 100 per cent.

This year, the festival includes a number of activities, including the most important of which are the intellectual seminars, conducted by Yousef Al Hamdan, who will present a seminar titled: The emergence of the youth theatre in Bahrain between reality and the horizon; while Rashid Najem will present a workshop entitled: Do we need theatre?; and Ahmed Jassim Al Jobin whill hold a workshop titled: The role of institutions in supporting the youth theatre in Bahrain.

Grand prizes

During the first meeting, the Festival’s organising Committee announced a significant increase in the sponsorship of participating clubs and centres by 100%. This is in addition to the festival’s allocated prizes, announced as: Encouragement Award BD300, Best Promising Actor Award BD 500, Best Promising Actor Award for Three Individuals BD600, Best Music Award BD 500, Best Décor BD500, Best Writer Award BD500, Best Actor in a Leading Role BD800, Best Actress in a Leading Role BD800, Best Actor in a Supporting Role BD500, Best Actress in a Supporting Role BB500, Best Direction Award BD1000, Special Judging Committee Award BD1500, Best Group Performance Award BD2000.