A week ago, Damion Radcliffe — drama teacher at Campion College — sat stone-face inside the Little Theatre in St Andrew as he awaited the results of the Shakespeare School’s Championship.

His student actors who performed Macbeth, were up against the combined cast of Kingston College and St Hugh’s High School who presented The Merchant of Venice. As the results were announced and Campion declared winner, his students went wild with excitement. But Radcliffe sat there unmoved, soaking up the entire experience as if it was an act from a play he was directing.

Winning is nothing new to this 33-year-old graduate of Kingston College and the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

As drama teacher at Campion College since 2008, he has guided his charges at the popular Corporate Area high school to the top of the medal podium on a number of occasions. His award-winning productions include Duelling Voices in 2009 and Belly Woman in 2010.

However, even today, years after graduating from Kingston College, Radcliffe is still disappointed that he never had the opportunity to do much acting during his high school years.

“I was born and raised in Waterhouse. I attended St Patrick’s Primary and then passed my Common Entrance (Examinations) for Kingston College. At Kingston College, they did not have a drama group. I kept my skills alive during those years acting out as the class clown and the community joker. It was only during my final months there that Peter Heslop started the drama group and we entered the Schoolâs Drama Festival with Ti Jean and his brothers. This was in 1997 and we won,” he told the Sunday Observer.

That win would give Radcliffe his first overseas trip, as he would be part of the cast of Jamaicans teens who went to the Caribbean School’s Drama Festival in Guyana. It is there that he would meet a fellow student actor, Sabrena McDonald, whom he subsequently married.

This experience would solidify in him a desire to take up drama as a profession. So by 1999, it was off to the School of Drama at the Edna Manley College in Kingston. Again, winning would come his way as he copped the award for the Best Drama in Education student.

Graduation did not yield the desired results. The roles weren’t coming in for Radcliffe, so he did what came naturally to him… he created the roles for himself.

“We got together with friends and created a production company, The Independent Actor’s Movement. Between 2003 and 2006, we were on a roll. We dominated the Tallawah Festival at the Philip Sherlock Centre at the UWI, Mona campus. We won more than 20 awards,” Radcliffe noted.

More awards were to come his way through his Independent Actors Movement. A trip to England touring in a production of Letters From the Dead would give him the opportunity to see theatre in that market and a particular play War Horse, which involved the use of puppetry. That would inspire Radcliffe to write The Anancy Chaptaz, a series of plays for children.

“Seeing War Horse and The Lion King in England made me want to write for a family audience. I came back to Jamaica renewed and refreshed and in 2011 Anancy Chaptaz: The Beginning was created. Since then there was Anancy Chaptaz: Gold Rush in 2012. In 2013, we did Anancy Chaptaz: Winner’s Circle which won five Actor Boy Awards and, in 2014, we did Anancy Chaptaz: Monkey Bizniz which won six Actor Boy Awards.”

He is humbled by the winning streak he has had over the years, and feels he has very far to go.

“I am not creating magic on stage just yet as a director. When I look at the work of Alwyn Bully, Trevor Nairne and Eugene Williams, they create magic, only when I am there will I truly be able to say I am a director.”