505 OPEN HOUSE
Old 505 Theatre is giving us the chance to see readings and showings of some of Australia’s most talented playwrights including Tahli Corin, Joshua Tyler, Caleb Lewis, Dominic Mercer, James Dalton and the Clockfire Theatre Company.
Award-winning writer Caleb Lewis believes programs like these are essential to playwrights.
“It’s incredibly important, particularly in the independent sector,” he explains. “I’m interested in playing around with a bunch of ways of telling the story. What’s vital and necessary is an audience to tell that story to for feedback. A showing keeps people on their toes in development.”
Lewis has two public showings at this year’s Open House. Betsy follows the story of a recent widower who after discarding his wife’s belongings finds one of her socks. When he starts conversing with the sock as though it’s his wife, it talks back.
Lifeboat is an adaptation of Hitchcock’s one-act film about a group of passengers stranded on a lifeboat with the person responsible for sinking the ship.
“Lifeboat is more about me putting on my director hat than an adaption per se,” he explains. “If anything I’m fiercely anti-adaption because it feels like we are getting drowned in it in Sydney. But that is mostly [true of] classics being turned into contemporary plays. It feels like theatre eating itself.”
“Ultimately, it comes down to story for me. Every writer has their obsessions and certain fascinations they come back to. I’m probably fooling but for me I do try and experiment with form and genre.”
Feb 6-28, Old 505 Theatre, Suite 505, 342 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, free, venue505.com/theatre
