You may not think that Braidwood, on a late autumn morning, would be the place to find half a dozen Hamlets, Romeos, Julias, and more than a dozen Portias, a Prospero, some Pucks, lots of fairies, a number of gravediggers, not to mention several malevolent Macbeths and his good ladies. But, if you had come to Braidwood Central School's inaugural Shakespeare Festival you could have been forgiven for thinking, for just a moment, that you had walked into the Bard's hometown at Stratford-upon-Avon, for everywhere one looked there were men in tights and young women with wings, swords capes, and billowing blouses and britches.

The festival parade made a noisy beginning to the day with best part of a hundred staff and students dressed up as their favourite characters, playing instruments, banging drums, blowing hooters and waving flags and ribbons while cavorting through the grounds of the school.

The parade was followed by a number of performances from students and staff. Students from Year 7, 9,10 performed sonnets and short extracts from plays, while Phil Day's Year 11 English created a terrific adaptation of a scene from Hamlet, marrying the text with passages from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

And so to lunch, and a spit roast cooked to perfection by Mick Wall's Primary Industries students. The day concluded with Elizabethan Games.

The student body at BCS yet again demonstrated their commitment to working hard to achieve great things. From making the posters, to setting up the hall, to serving the food, to wearing the costumes and performing the plays, they gave it their all and deserve to be roundly congratulated for a job well done.

The festival was a part of the Globe Centre Australia's National Youth Shakespeare Festival, in which over 70 schools in NSW alone participated in the first round of local events. Students from 9/10 Drama and Year 11 English will now go on to perform at a regional festival in Bowral in June.

Contributed by Jonathan Millar