It’s the ultimate theatre challenge for writers and actors – being been tasked to write, rehearse then perform a series of plays in the space of 24 hours.
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The 24 Hour Theatre Project begins Friday at the Bridge Street Theatre in Coniston and is run by Blackbox Theatre artistic director Luke Berman.
“I put this on as a development program. I think we need exciting new ways of developing art,” he said.
“Both actors and writers step up another level ... there’s a challenge and it’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have time to think about anything, you don’t have time to have self doubt.”
The team includes nine writers, 32 actors and six production team members with the end result to be nine plays ranging from 7 to 15 minutes in length.
The makeup of the teams won’t be known until the project begins, with other elements in place to ensure each play is totally original.
“The writers are also left without knowing what the makeup of their teams are going to be until the Friday night, so they don’t know if they’re writing for one of five,” Berman said.
“And also we do give them stimulus material … so each team the writer will pull [an element] from a hat and they’ve got to include that in their piece. It might be a topic, it might be a line from a song or might be a line of dialogue that must be included.”
Friday night the teams come together for their briefing session where writers will work overnight on the script. They will then hand the scripts to actors Saturday morning, giving them the day to learn their parts, interpret the vision and then perform to the public on Saturday night.
“I put this on as a development program i think we need exciting new ways of developing art,” Berman said.
“We have a Region full of specialists whereas all the actors up there that I've experienced, most of them are going into TV and film so technically is really good but the Illawarra full of stage specialists that know how to take the risks and i want to put these on the map.”
24-Hour Theatre Project, Bridge Street Theatre stage in Coniston at 7:30pm. Tickets $20, concession $15 via www.trybooking.com