Festival History

One of the highlights of the EMACT theatre season is the Annual Community Theatre Drama Festival, held in the late spring of each year. The popular long weekend event, which can maximum accommodate 18 participating member companies, entertains as well as educates. It's an opportunity to witness a wide range of theatre and learn from professionals who adjudicate each production presented.

The Festival is highlighted by an exciting tension filled closing awards ceremony, citing the productions and individuals for outstanding performance and theatre excellence. The crowd waits nervously as each award is announced and count down to the climax of the festival -- which production will receive the coveted Best of Festival trophy and cash award.

Our Festival dates back to 1954 when the Brainwey Players of Braintree and Weymouth invited three companies of the Little Theatre League (LTL) a state association of community theatres to participate in a one act competition. From that beginning has grown the event we know today. Along the way, qualifying productions were added to include cuttings and scenes from full length plays and musicals. From that first event came some of the structure and format still used now; such as, the Best of Festival winning company hosts the following year's festival and only amateur actors and directors may participate.

In 1961, with the departure of LTL, the Festival was taken up by the Community Theatre Division of the New England Theatre Conference (NETC) a regional theatre arts organization. Until 1966 the Festival was held at various locations; but, in 1967, the hosting group Hovey Players, arranged to have the event on the campus of Brandeis University. It remained there until 2004 when it moved to the campus of Babson College. In recent years, the festival has been at the Campbell Performing Arts Center at The Groton School. In 1970, to make the Festival a better learning experience, the current practice of providing a collective 15 minute timed critique of each performance by festival adjudicators was adopted. These three also select all awards including the Best of Festival production. In 1992 the Festival was co-sponsored with EMACT and in 1993, became the EMACT Community Theatre Drama Festival, sponsored solely by EMACT and recognized by NETC and the American Association of Community Theatres (AACT) as the official Eastern Massachusetts State Community Theatre Festival.

Our festival ties into a biennial New England Regional Festival (NERF), which features the winning productions of community theatre festivals which are held in several of the New England states. The winner of the Regional Festival represents New England in a National Festival of Community Theatres, also held biennially, sponsored by AACT.

Theatre Festivals have become a popular spectator event. Highly structured state, regional and national competitions have evolved using ours, the oldest festival in the nation, as their model. EMACT is proud of that contribution to the festival movement and our continued support of its goals.