The National Student Drama Festival is the ideal environment to bring fledgling work, expose it in its embryonic state to a large, passionate crowd with exacting standards; examine, test and prod the work in every way imaginable, engage in fruitful dialogue and leave artistically and practically developed.

It is, therefore, the ideal environment to develop radical, new theatre.

Which is why – as much as what I did see at NSDF interested and thrilled me – what I did not see what just as fascinating.

This year was dominated by extant or previously published plays, with only one piece, Stop Look Listen by Elizabeth Gaubert, being written by a student and only two devised works out of 13 overall.

While established texts are not barriers to making exciting, relevant theatre, the NSDF could be a prime testing ground for more difficult interpretations or new work that is direct and challenging.

Renowned actress Janet Suzman, in her first year as NSDF judge, spent the week viewing every show and picking the lucky recipients of the much-coveted end-of-week awards.

At the glitzy and adrenaline-riddled finishing ceremony, she was vocal about the importance of this radical impulse in young practitioners. “Drop the cosiness,” she demanded, warning that she sensed “a certain political correctness”.She then finished the week with some iconic words from King Lear: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”.

This blunt but necessary honesty pinpointed my desire for NSDFs to come. Perhaps the cuts have created a culture where we fear failure, where a “wrong” step could signal the death of a company. But we should absolutely fight against this with new and more dangerous theatre, with no prescription for what is “right.”

We are in a time that demands theatre’s voice to be active. The spirit of the direct action of the student protests could not be found at this year’s festival, but perhaps next year’s possibly International Student Drama Festival will resonate the importance of the live act.

Risk, innovation and the compulsion to comment on, engage with and progress cannot be sacrificed for career development, or be cowered away from as they are not cut-friendly.

More than ever, we young creatives are aware of our network of peer support, of funding, of the importance of making our own work, and the NSDF is an amazing structure with a wealth of resources in which to find all the above and take massive risks too.

Let us, in fact, aim for greatness by completely obliterating what we “ought to say”, and at ISDF 2012, bring the most engaged, diverse, formally unusual, least cosy, and most risky voice imaginable.

Let us ask the hardest questions as loudly as we can, and let NSDF be when we start to make some answers.

Read Debbie and Tom’s blogs from NSDF.

Image: Janet Suzman by Sphinx Theatre Company, available under a CC BY-NC license.