The 2021 Festival was held when travel and mixing was still very much in doubt after the initial COVID pandemic. It was decided to hold an online festival where people could sign up and listen together wherever they were in the world.
The jury discussed the plays from the comfort of their own homes though at odd times for some people.
There was also an opportunity for individuals to collaborate online to produce 20 sec dramas.
The winners of these dramas and the other categories can be found below:
Full length
1. Cerna Voda Czech Radio
2. Helena, Elena Zeiser
3. The Other Half, Radio Romania
Short form
1. 3 minutes of silence, Wederik de Backer
2. Everyone Everywhere, Collectif Wow
3. Dans La Tenaille, Collectif Wow
Short introductions to the Full and Short Forms follow later..
ALCS Audience Award
1st place: A Haunting beyond the Lake – Richard Brooks (UK)
2nd place: Human Things – Grazyna Lutoslawska (Poland)
3rd place: Hunting Season – Georgian public radio (Georgia)
Honourable mentions: Notes from JJ – Georgian Public Radio, Fenland Symphony – Chris Bradbury, and Alvorada – Matheus Moraes.
20-Second Drama Award
1st place: Lady Macbeth – Festival consortium
2nd place: Spider – Pippa Brenchley
3rd place: Maths Problem – Darrick Wood School
4th place: List of Things – Festival consortium
Full length
1. Černá voda
Klara Novotna / Czech Radio, Czech Republic (Czech)
“Two groups of friends, one magical night and water that washes off the differences in possessions, religions and origin. What is left of courageous plans and fragile relationships twenty years later? The dramatic poem by top German author Roland Schimmelpfennig speaks of difference and inequality of worlds existing side by side, of fear, prejudice and indifference that deepen the chasm between them. But also of love and tenderness. “
2. Helena
Elena Zieser, Germany (German)
“Friendship is a story that tells itself. With a beginning and end, a room within a room, continuously reinventing itself, where endings are marked with new beginnings. HELENA tells a story of women’s friendship. When one friend receives forgotten recordings of the other’s dreams she begins to recount their experiences – the love and time they shared and how they came to loose each other. The play features original sound recordings of a dream diary recorded from 2013 to 2015 showing an absurd, sensitive dream world and its strange connection to the women’s real-life friendship.”
3. Sufletul Pereche / The Other Half
Oana Crsitea Grigorescu / Radio Romania, Romania (Romanian)
“The Other Half is a monodrama focusing on a universally acknowledged theme: the artist going through a midlife crisis and confronting his demons, self sacrifice triggered by inner need to create and fear of failure. Life metaphorically viewed as a swimming race in a pool is a perfect opportunity to face the voices of his consciousness.”
Short form
1. 3 Minuten Solte (3 Minutes of Silence)
Wederik De Backer / De Zieke Steur, Belgium (Dutch) 3 minutes 29 seconds “This is the story of a young man sitting in the back seat of a car. In the front are his parents, who have been divorced for more than twenty years. What you hear is a report of a car ride, wrapped in silence. For this short podcast, audio maker Wederik De Backer started digging into his own past. This audio piece was part of an episode of the Belgian independent podcast ‘Plantrekkers’.”
2. Everyone/Everywhere
Florent Barat / Le Collectif Wow! The Speak Softly Shop, Belgium (French & English)
“What if we were confined in someone else’s head? What if we could be the little voice in this head? What if we could converse with the person to whom this head belongs? And what if we could be eavesdropping on this conversation? What if we could be everywhere? What if everyone could be everywhere? What « if »? Isn’t everyone everywhere now? Everyone/Everywhere is a radio essay on confinement and surveillance. It was made during the lockdown period of spring 2020, in home studio conditions, and started with sound experimentations on audio archives of French legendary actor Gérard Depardieu, in whose head we dived without asking permission (and in which we stayed a little, because it was fun).”
3. Dans La tenaille (entre le coq et le fou)
Florent Barat / Le Collectif Wow! Belgium (French)
“The surrealistic journey of a woman on a treadmill at the gym. A final Sunday run that takes her deep down inside herself to face the absolute vacuity of life.”