The Hastings Musical Festival is not entirely musical! The Speech and Drama and Mime Section offers over 70 Classes ranging from Shakespeare to Humorous Verse to One-act Plays.
The Centenary History Book of Hastings Musical Festival written by Roland Garrad records, an Elocution Competition for local children under 13, for a prize of 10 shillings in 1910! This may well have been the beginning of the Speech and Drama Section. In 1918 a Gold Medal Class for elocution was introduced and is still presented today if the required standard is reached.
By 1921 the elocution classes had grown to 6. One-act Plays were introduced in 1927 along with, reading at sight, a quick memory class, composing a poem and, impromptu speaking. 100 marks were awarded for the One-act Play ‘Between the Soup and the Savoury’ in 1928! Choral Speaking was a new class in 1929.
The Speech and Drama Section of the festival has been the start for many members of the acting profession, probably the most famous being Julie Christie who won the Verse Speaking Class for 11 and under 12’s in 1952 and went on to become a British Film Academy and Oscar winner.
One other notable winner was James Paisley in 1973 in the Original Verse Class, on his birthday aged 95! Who said the HMF is for young people only?
As the Hastings Observer observed in 1969 in a comment on the festival:-
 ‘Fortunately the oldest forms of artistic expression still have their devotees and at Hastings it is good that the choral speech is to the fore, though more support would be welcome. Elocution in other forms has been very popular, and will play its part in seeing the English Language, constructed with such beauty and capable of expression with such infinite variety of tone, is not obscured by Mid-Atlantic sounds.jpg)
Currently the aim is to increase the number of entries in all the Speech and Drama Classes, in particular, the once very popular One-act plays and the impromptu class which has become a five minute improvisation for a team of four aged under 16.
The future must be to encourage young people especially, and all schools, to participate in what is one of the leading festivals in the country. There can be no better training in self-confidence, self-control and discipline than being able to speak in public and such an acquirement serves any individual all their life.
Shakespeare has some good advice to those entering this Section:
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus: but use all gently
Hamlet (Act III, Sc 2)
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