Jane Walters
As soon as she joined the group in 1998 when she directed My Mother Said I Never Should Jane became a key member and enjoyed considerable success both as an actress and director winning many acting and directing awards at drama festivals for her innovative and highly imaginative productions.
On stage she won Best Actress Awards for her roles in The Last Yankee and All-Winners success Scarecrow
Jane's imaginative productions of Lorca's Yerma in 2000 and Five Kinds of Silence in 2001 won festivals at Woking and Spelthorne. The following year the production was invited to appear at the All-Winners Fesival at Hertford.
In 1999 Jane directed RDG's first full-length Shakespeare production : Twelfth Night. In 2005 she directed a production of Anthony Minghella's drama A Little Like Drowning
Jane appeared in our award-winning production of Bed which went through the various knock-out rounds to represent England at the British Finals at Inverness.
She appeared as Norah in the festival production of The Allotment - a performance which won her the Best Actress Award at the 2004 Spelthorne Fesival.
In the summer of 2005 Jane formed the RDG Youth Theatre Workshop to present an opportunity for older teenagers to explore exciting theatre. Their first production - the challenging Interview - won three awards at local festivals, including two Best Youth trophies. Adjudicators continued to praise the creativity and invention of Jane's directing skills in her multi-award winning 2006 production of And Go To Innisfree. Both Interview and And Go To Innisfree were selected for the 2006 All-Winners Festival with Interview winning the Youth Trophy while And Go To Innisfree was Runner-Up in the Adult section - an amazing double achievement.
Her very attractive presentation of Hay Fever was followeed by a return to acting winning the Best Actress Award at the 2007 Spelthorne Drama Fesival for her lyrical performance in The Art of Remembering. 2008 saw Jane directing the moving Kindertransport, followed by her highly imaginative direction of our Youth Production of Find Me which won several major Youth awards at the autumn festivals. At the same time she was also appearing in the award-winning But Yesterday. 2009 saw Jane direct Arthur Miller's Broken Glass and the multi-award winning Who Was Hilary Maconochie? On stage again Jane's performance in The Cagebirds was nominated for best actress at the 2010 Leatherhead Festival.
In the autumn her direction of the devised Face to Face for our Youth Workshop won four awards at the autumn festivals - including best youth production. Her last production was the Youth Workshop presentation of Howard Benton's Gum and Goo. Shortly after, Jane sadly died in April 2011 after a brave fight with cancer.
She is greatly missed by all her many friends in RDG and the wider drama community in North West Surrey.
As a tribute to Jane's amazing career both with RDG and formerly with other local groups, together with her inspirational professional career as a drama tutor, RDG commissioned a trophy in her name for the Best Director at Spelthorne & Runnymede Drama Festival. It seemed very fitting that the first winner of this award was RDG's Judith Dolley. In addition, the group's 168th main production Calendar Girls was produced as a tribute to her memory.