GCS announces adjudicator for 2021 Gibraltar Drama Festival

The Gibraltar Cultural Services announced yesterday that the adjudicator for the 2021 Gibraltar Drama Festival is Jan Palmer Sayer, the chair of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators.
Mrs Palmer Sayer studied at Trent Park College and at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.
Five years ago, she retired as Headteacher of Hertswood, a Specialist Arts College, featured in a BBC’s autumn education series with Professor Dylan Wiliam.
In 1998, she was awarded an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies at the same time as running her own theatre company – Shattered Windscreen.
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 which was awarded five stars by The Scotsman.
In 2015, at the other end of the country, her production of The Grapes of Wrath, the Steinbeck classic adapted by Frank Galati, was one of a sequence of regular appearances by her theatre company at the famous cliffside Minack Theatre.
This gained the company another five-star review as well as the coveted Minack Trophy for the best production of 2015.
In 2014, she was commissioned by the Arts Council, Isle of Man to direct a community passion play at Easter as the island celebrated its year as the first Island of Culture.
Her directing credits include A Matter of Life and Death, a promenade production of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, The 39 Steps and Our Man in Havana.
Earlier this year, she trod the boards once again playing Hanna Kennedy in Peter Oswald’s adaptation of Mary Stuart and Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.
Mrs Palmer Sayer 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 the current chair of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators, and one of its busiest members.
This year, amongst her many engagements, she will be adjudicating in Munich, Ulster and Edinburgh and next year she will return to Florida to adjudicate at the aactWorldFest but for now, she is very much looking forward to her first visit to Gibraltar.