Warwick Student Arts Festival (WSAF) - WSAF 2008

WSAF 2008

Over 80 events took place in WSAF’08 across a breadth of spaces making full use of the campus environment. The Piazza once again served as the festival’s traditional focal point, and was harnessed for large scale performances which entertained crowds of several hundred. These included concerts from all the university’s orchestras and several slots for Band Soc, a “Shakespeare-in-the-park” style production of The Tempest, Revelation Rock Gospel Choir, Bollywood and jazz dance shows and Beats and Pieces, a spectacular breakdancing competition with crews from around Europe.

The Arts Centre hosted a mixture of classical and experimental theatre in the studio, including a production of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot, Get Treasure, Repeat and new student writing including the sell-outs Quest,Tech Crew: The Musical!, Nineteen and sketch show An Evening Without Dignity. In the cinema, alongside our own student-made films, we collaborated with Warwick Shootout to cross-market our events and incorporate their competition screenings and awards into WSAF. The arts centre foyers also hosted exhibitions and hands-on creative workshops, including second-hand book sculpture and a “big art attack” in the style of TV personality Neil Buchanan.

The Union was used to host wet weather events shifted from the Piazza, and boasted a varied selection of events in its own right, including student cabaret, a showcase of student–designed videogames, musical theatre productions, and poetry readings. The Ramphal Building housed a multimedia performance of a work by Daniel Neofetou which encompassed film, music and theatre entitled Angel in Crayola. WSAF also began a collaboration with the university’s new CAPITAL Centre, hosting several small-scale theatre productions in its intimate box space. Other events – such as a roaming late night production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, watched by over four hundred students – made full use of less conventional performance locations.