The 2026 Waltham Forest Festival of Theatre
Thursday 26th to Saturday 28th March 2026
Adjudicator: Jan Palmer Sayer
Forest Community Centre, Guildford Road, Walthamstow E17 4EA
2026 Festival award winners
Festival Award for Best Team
Woodhouse Players – Vintage
Festival Award for Second Team
CADOS –Carnival
Romeril Award for Third Team (in memory of Phyl and Eric Romeril)
Wadham Players –Whodidit?
Roy Seammen Award for Adjudicator's Selection
The directors of Famous Last Words - Danielle Capretti and Ian Pow
Festival Award for Best Performance by an Actress
Barbra Wilson (CADOS) - The Narrator in Carnival
Festival Award for Best Performance by an Actor
Mathew MacLachlan (Woodhouse Players) - David in Vintage
Festival Award for Best Stage Presentation
Woodhouse Players - Vintage
Vi Gostling New Writing Award
Ian Prest - Mingulay
Wanstead Players Pat Dancer Award for Best Supporting Performance
Neil Bird (Woodhouse Players) - Nevis in Famous Last Words
CADOS Award for Most Promising Performer 18 and Under
Robin Balchin (Waltham Forest Youth Theatre) – Larry in All By Myself
This year's plays
Thursday 26 March 7.30pm
Waltham Forest Youth Theatre present All By Myself
A comedy by Robert Scott
Wadham Players present Whodidit?
A comedy by Neil Harrison
Friday 27 March 7.30pm
Theatre in the Square present London Milonga
A drama by Mary Kathleen Brown
CADOS present Carnival
An original play by Nicole Constantinou,
shedding light on the superficial world of influencers
New Play Unsuitable for children
Woodhouse Players present Famous Last Words
An original play by Dave Paine
New Play Unsuitable for children
Saturday 28 March 4pm
Woodhouse Players present Mingulay
An original play by Iain Prest
New Play Unsuitable for children
Highams Players present The Man on the Floor
A comedy by Neil Simon
Saturday 28 March 7.30pm
Wadham Players present After the Flags and Bands
A drama by Allan Williams
Woodhouse Players present Vintage
A drama by Lucy Kaufman
Each session will conclude with an adjudication of the two plays. After the adjudications on Saturday evening, there will be an interval, after which the Adjudicator will announce winners and present prizes
This year's Adjudicator
Jan Palmer-Sayer MA B.Ed GoDA
Jan studied at Trent Park College and at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. Her theatrical exploits have taken her as far afield as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where her production of The Fall of the House of Usher was a sell-out show and awarded 5 stars by The Scotsman.
In 2014, Jan was commissioned by the Arts Council, Isle of Man, to direct a community passion play at Easter, while at the other end of the country, her production of The Grapes of Wrath, adapted by Frank Galati, was one of a sequence of regular appearances by her theatre company at the famous cliffside Minack Theatre and it gained the company another 5-star review as well as the coveted Minack Trophy for the best production of 2015.
This was followed in 2019 with a 5* production of I, Don Quixote by Dale Wasserman, named runner-up for the Minack Trophy and playing (when it wasn’t rained off!) to full houses, and she was once again invited to play there in 2021 with a madcap production of The 39 Steps – a suitable antidote against the country’s lockdown. The company returned to the Minack in 2023 with Jan’s production of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: “what a beautiful production; visually rich, musically enchanting and deeply moving. . .” and were back again in 2025 to present
Jan studied at Trent Park College and at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. Her theatrical exploits have taken her as far afield as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where her production of The Fall of the House of Usher was a sell-out show and awarded 5 stars by The Scotsman. In 2014, Jan was commissioned by the Arts Council, Isle of Man to direct a community passion play at Easter while at the other end of the country, her production of The Grapes of Wrath, adapted by Frank Galati, was one of a sequence of regular appearances by her theatre company at the famous cliffside Minack Theatre and it gained the company another 5-star review as well as the coveted Minack Trophy for the best production of 2015. This was followed in 2019 with a 5* production of I, Don Quixote, by Dale Wasserman, named runner-up for the Minack Trophy and playing (when it wasn’t rained off!) to full houses, and she was once again invited to play there in 2021 with a madcap production of The 39 Steps – a suitable antidote against the country’s lockdown. The company returned to the Minack in 2023 with Jan’s production of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: “what a beautiful production; visually rich, musically enchanting and deeply moving. . .” and were back again in 2025 to present Shakespeare in Love, in which she also cast herself as QE1. The show played to sell-out houses and was, once again, a runner up for the Minack Trophy. Jan’s other recent directing credits include Pressure by David Haig (which won the British All Winners Festival in July 2021), Husbands and Sons adapted by Ben Power, Peep by Jodi Gray, Peter Whelan’s The Bright and Bold Design, The Winslow Boy and she is currently in rehearsal for Hobson’s Choice. She also finds time to act, appearing recently in The Cane by Mark Ravenhill, The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, A Monster Calls, based on the novel by Patrick Ness as well as playing four roles in a recently staged collection of new writing.
Jan was appointed as a GoDA adjudicator in 2001. She returned to GoDA’s Council in 2014 to organise the 2015 National Festivals Conference, held in London. She is a past Chairman of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators, and over the last few years she has adjudicated festivals in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Gibraltar and the USA.

