Jan Palmer Sayer

Jan studied at Trent Park College and at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.  Eight years ago, she retired as Headteacher of Hertswood, a Specialist Arts College, featured in a BBC’s autumn education series with Professor Dylan Wiliam.  In 1998, she was awarded an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies at the same time as running her own theatre company – Shattered Windscreen.  Her theatrical exploits have taken her as far afield as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where her production of The Fall of the House of Usher was awarded 5 stars by The Scotsman.  In 2015, at the other end of the country, her production of The Grapes of Wrath, the Steinbeck classic adapted by Frank Galati, was one of a sequence of regular appearances by her theatre company at the famous cliffside Minack Theatre and it gained the company another 5-star review as well as the coveted Minack Trophy for the best production of 2015.  In 2014, Jan was commissioned by the Arts Council, Isle of Man to direct a community passion play at Easter as the island celebrated its year as the first Island of Culture.  Jan’s directing credits include a promenade production of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Our Man in Havana, Alfie and, most recently, Pressure by David Haig which won the British All Winners Festival in July 2021.  In 2016, she directed The Frontier Trilogy by Jethro Compton as a piece of immersive theatre and followed this with Compton’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance at the Company of Players, Hertford.  In 2019, her company returned to the Minack Theatre with a 5* production of I, Don Quixote, by Dale Wasserman, named runner-up for the Minack Trophy and playing (when it wasn’t rained off!) to full houses.  At the moment, she is preparing a production of The 39 Steps for the Minack for September 2021.  Recently, she also trod the boards once again, playing Hanna Kennedy in Peter Oswald’s adaptation of Mary Stuart and Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.  2020 and 2021 has been a rather lean year for all, but Jan has kept herself busy directing Zoom and stage productions and finally managed to tread the boards herself in July 2021 as Mathilde in Horovitz’s My Old Lady.

Jan was appointed as a GoDA adjudicator in 2001.  She returned to GoDA’s Council in 2014 to organise the 2015 National Festivals Conference, held in London.  She is a past Chairman of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators, and one of the its busiest members.  Over the last four years she has adjudicated festivals in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Gibraltar and the USA.  For now, she is very much looking forward to returning to Florida and the aactWorldFest – fingers crossed!