Pete Postlethwaite, Stephen Fry and Meera Syal.

Too populist?

Alan Yentob, Harold Pinter, Michael Billigton.

Too scholarly?

How about Simon Russell Beale, Timothy West and Prunella Scales?

The list of famous alumni who had their first taste of the stage at the National Student Drama Festival, while not inexhaustible, will throw up a good few names before you start getting anywhere near the bottom of the barrel.

Since its inception in 1956 by the Sunday Times arts columnist and the festival's first artistic director Kenneth Pearson, the newspaper's theatre critic Harold Hobson, and NUS president Frank Copplestone, the annual event has brought the best in student theatre together for an intensive week-long period every Easter.

During the week, held in Scarborough for the past 17 year, the festival gives more than 600 students working in drama the chance to perform their work and take part in workshops. It is a vital point in the professional careers of a number of our great actors, directors and writers.

This year the festival faced the most difficult period in its history. At the end of last year the Arts Council announced its intention to shake up its funding, with the biggest cuts in the 60-year history of the organisation. NSDF found itself facing the axe.

Arts Council Yorkshire proposed to withdraw all of the £52,000 funding it provides annually to the organisation.

"It was a serious shock," admits Holly Kendrick, the festival's artistic director.

"But we believed the decision was based on flawed arguments, so we put our appeal together."

The Arts Council had suggested that the organisation should find its funding from local education authorities. Because the festival attracts students from across the country it was argued that this was impractical. The week in Scarborough costs the festival, now a registered charity with an annual turnover of £250,000, a total of £95,000. Losing the festival would be a serious blow to the Arts across the country – you only have to look at some of the names who have had a taste of theatre in Scarborough and then gone on to enrich the cultural lives of all of us – those in charge argued. Closer to home, the festival brings a reputation and hundreds of students to Yorkshire every year.

Fortunately, the Arts Council listened to the argument and, swayed perhaps by the enormous outcry at the proposed cuts, the festival was saved, with funding promised until 2010.

"It is an extraordinary thing and a real thrill for the students to watch each others work," says Kendrick. "They learn from each other and learn from people who are already working in the profession."

In the past year, the board of the NSDF have seen more than 100 student shows, selecting 12 plays to be performed over the coming week of the festival, which begins tomorrow.

The students perform in venues including the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the Hull University Scarborough Complex, and the Spa Complex. The students taking productions for
this year include those
from Sheffield University, Nottingham University, Bretton Hall, York
University and Hull University.

"When our funding was threatened, the thing that I found so wonderful was not necessarily the messages we had on our website from the people who have gone on to become big names in the world of performing, but the people who had gone on to do a job completely unconnected with the theatre or acting," says Kendrick.

"They wrote about how much it had given them in terms of confidence and
how they use the skills they learned in their chosen careers."

The NSDF starts tomorrow with an opening ceremony at the Grand Hall Spa Complex at 4.15pm.

For more information log on to www.nsdf.org.uk