A PLAY written by a former Meridian School teacher has won the National Drama Festivals Association s prestigious George Taylor Memorial Award. The annual award, which was first made in 1979, is one of the highest accolades in the country for new drama. A

A PLAY written by a former Meridian School teacher has won the National Drama Festivals Association's prestigious George Taylor Memorial Award.

The annual award, which was first made in 1979, is one of the highest accolades in the country for new drama.

And this year it has been won by Emma Roskilly's Oswiecim.

Set in the Polish town of the same name, Oswiecim is more commonly known as Auschwitz, the scene of the Second World War concentration camp.

The play won last year's Welwyn Drama Festival to earn a place on the shortlist for this year's George Taylor award.

Miss Roskilly, who now teaches at St Christopher School in Letchworth, said: "The play was inspired by a drama lesson exploring the holocaust.

"We tried to imagine what the people that lived in the little town in Poland that is now so famous might have gone through once the camp was in operation.

"We tried to imagine how they let it happen and did not act and continued their lives with such an atrocity on their doorstep.

"The play is Brechtian style and contains lots of silence - it is more about what is not said than what is.