Robert Richmond was the judge of this year's 'Famous for 15 Minutes' playwriting competition, sponsored by the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society (BMDS).

An accomplished actor, composer and arranger, he is also associate director of the Aquila Theatre Company in New York, and teaches in the classical studio at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Despite this professional background, however, Mr. Richmond found choosing the winner, Andra Simons' play 'Star Songs', no simple task.

Describing all of six of the finalist plays as "excellent", Mr. Richmond said he enjoyed reading all of them, and found them "a great journey from page to stage ? from actually being pieces of literature and then becoming performance pieces".

"I thought very hard about them all, but ultimately I chose Andra's because I felt that it had a sense of poetry and theatricality, and I also thought it had great depth of character and emotion.

"I was intrigued from beginning to end. His play never really told you where you were, or who you were with. There were so many nuances that my imagination was engaged, and I was constantly having to use my own creativity to be with it the whole time."

In terms of the other entries, Mr. Richmond said that, in comparing some of them to Mr. Simons' entry, he found them "maybe flatter on the page", yet on stage he was able to see their construction, "and they just took off and flew".

"I really enjoyed 'Half Time' by Henry Godfrey, which was fabulously performed, and I would encourage him to develop that into a story. There were so many more things to happen there," he said. "I really enjoyed 'Parallel Lines' by Carol Birch very much too, and I think she has a great opportunity to develop that into a full-length play."

Overall, the visiting judge was deeply impressed with "the wonderful talent in Bermuda".

"It was an extraordinary weekend, and I also enjoyed giving the workshop. The people's enthusiasm was fantastic. They have a real jewel of a society in the BMDS, and I would give anything to come back and see how they are doing."

Mr. Richmond also had high praise for Kelvin Hastings-Smith, writer, president of the BMDS, and co-producer of 'Famous for 15 Minutes'.

"His tenacity, energy and enthusiasm for theatre was a wonderful thing to see. I came back to New York and told the Aquila Theatre Company of all my adventures and said, 'We have got to recapture that drive, enthusiasm and passion for theatre because that is really what gives it life'."