The 1996 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Drama goes to 28-year-old director/writer/producer Lara Foot Newton who has packed a great deal of drama into her young career to date. Her staging of Paul Slabolepsczy's Over the Hill in 1989 so impressed the play-wright that he insisted that they work together in future.
Since then she has directed a number of his works - One for the High Jump, Braait Laaities, The Return of Elvis du Pisanie and Victoria Almost Falls. Playwright and director formed FootPaul Productions in 1992.
Last year Foot Newton directed two very successful one-person shows, Bellydancing (starring Joanna Weinberg) and Stand and Deliver (with Gilda Blacher), as well as Womb Tide, a play which she wrote and for which she has been widely applauded.
Increasingly Foot Newton has also been making her mark as a producer with a strong commitment to theatre. Last year she brought no fewer than six works to the Grahamstown Festival 'fringe'. These included the acclaimed celebrated On the Verge of Exploding and The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me.