Themes
If you are participating in the festival, please email me one theme idea.
6pm [BST] Friday, 2 October
Each participant will need to be on the Zoom call on Friday night at 6pm
to facilitate communications. Please do not leave the Zoom call until you
have made contact with your production team and confirmed the rehearsal
schedule.
I will get Zoom details for that meeting to everyone once I have finalized the
participants.
7am to 8pm [BST] Saturday, 3 October
I will give you a Zoom link to use if you have any questions or concerns about your production on Saturday. Please email me to let me know that you'd like to speak with me. Or just feel free to email me with your concerns or questions.
Actors / Directors / Playwrights
I will not post any contributors’ CV. Production teams will be put together on Friday evening.
It will be up to the director to arrange a Zoom call on Saturday to begin rehearsal.
By 12pm on Saturday, I will need from the director confirmation of the name of the play and the creative team for the programme.
The director and playwright can discuss how they want to work together. Some might not need the playwright present during a first reading and others might want them there for re-writes and clarifications. It will be up to the director & playwright to manage that relationship.
Directors - please make sure that you are familiar with Zoom [and its 40 minute
time limit for rehearsal] and how best to utilize it in performance &
rehearsal.
It is up to each creative team how they want to brainstorm and come up with
their play and when they start rehearsing it- it can be sooner than the
timeline set out; this timeline is more for internal deadlines for the
production to run smoothly, but if a group decides to start rehearsing on
Friday evening that’s completely fine.
Playwrights -
When you’re drafting and working up your responses to whatever the theme might be for this festival show, we encourage you to think beyond the domestic setting that you might find your actors in due to the restrictions of the pandemic. We are looking for pieces that will stretch the imagination of the participants and audience, so while large changes to the actors background to remove sofas and beds might not be possible, don’t let that limit the scope and ambition of the piece you’re writing, directing or performing in.
Please make sure to provide us with a two line synopsis
by Saturday at 12pm.
In terms of length, we’re looking for pieces that run up to 10 minutes. We’re sure all the writers will use different software and page layouts, but broadly speaking in a standard MS Word document that would equate to about 2-2.5 sides of text for a monologue and 5-7 pages for dialogue. These aren’t hard limits- a page of short one word lines is going to go much quicker than a page of speeches for example- but just to give a rough measure for when you’re writing.
Play Submissions
Plays will need to be submitted to myself & the director of the piece by 12pm [BST] on Saturday. It is assumed that the director, the playwright and actors have discussed processes on Friday night to make the rehearsal smooth.
Play Structure
Actors will be randomly drawn for each production according to the following structure:
· - Monologues
· - Duologues
· - Triads
This will allow for the greatest variety within the structure and number of actors.
Programme
I will be producing a simple programme for the performance. I need a 5 line bio and small headshot for the programme to be submitted to me as soon as possible.
Tech on Sunday afternoon [12pm BST]
There will be a 12pm call for a technical rehearsal for every team. This will allow us to figure out best practice on Zoom and how to get in and out of pieces.
Performance on Sunday Afternoon
The performance will begin at 3pm [BST] on Sunday 4 October.
All participants will have a Zoom Link.
Everyone will have a running order and I will introduce each piece, so it will be up to each team to turn microphones / cameras on in due time to be ready to begin.
ALL Audience will purchase tickets via Eventbrite [ https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-new-writing-new-normal-international-theatre-festival-tickets-122026142477?utm_campaign=post_publish&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite&utm_content=shortLinkNewEmail]
Please invite audiences through the Eventsbrite Page where they will get a Youtube link once they have paid for a ticket.
I will welcome everyone to the event at 3pm and will introduce the first piece; once that piece is finished, I will introduce the second piece and so on. This should give performers enough time to be ready.
Everyone else will have their camera and microphones off so that the play
will run on Zoom with no distractions.
Once I have more details about the plays, I will determine a running order and
post that to you mid-afternoon on Saturday.
:::::
All of this above is subject to change and to be added to as and when questions arise, so please come back to the FAQ frequently.
