Bite-sized plays are short and sweet

The city’s annual theatre sprint has returned to thrill audiences with its 10-minute form – strap in for the ride.

Aptly named Short + Sweet, the dramatic festival  showcases a wide collection of ten-minute plays at Newtown Theatre, Marrickville’s Sidetrack Theatre and the Seymour Centre until the end of March.

During its ten-week running time, the festival presents 180 plays, shortlisted from hundreds of submissions.

Festival director, Pete Malicki, said last year Short + Sweet received 870 scripts and 70 plays from independent theatre companies. “It’s definitely growing,” he said. “There’s a huge demand for it. We get thousands of audience members every year and it provides a lot of opportunities for artists.”

“It’s fresh, fast-paced, fun and exciting, a very valid art form now, can have very high quality stuff in 10 minutes.”

Since it hit stages 11 years ago, the Festival has attracted an estimated 10,000 creative individuals. This year’s event attracted over 300 writers and directors and exceeded 500 actors.

One of the Festival’s long-standing and reputed talents Benito Di Fonzo will amuse audiences with his latest, One Day in the Life of the Keef; the human riff, an absurdist surreal comedy about Keith Richards starring David Attrill.

The journalist, playwright, poet and performer said he was fascinated by the latest publishing craze of rock biographies and autobiographies. “Last Christmas someone gave me Keith Richards’ bio,” he said. This was the spark, one that he developed with director Alana Hicks. “I do imagine an audience when I’m writing and I imagine myself performing it. I guess I imagine those not dissimilar to me, maybe younger and better looking.” Above all he tries to create a piece of comedy so it should be funny, he said.

Mr Malicki said there are around 10 judges viewing the Top 100 plays during the week and between six and eight for the Wildcard performances (80 plays) on the weekends. At the end, the best director is awarded a $5000 cash prize.

Talents either submit a script through the website or enter as an independent theatre group with a pre-prepared play, cast and director.

“There are five main theatrical elements we consider when assessing scripts: the story, character, dialogue, theatricality, and dramatic tension or comedic value,” he said.

“There are a few people whose work is invariably very high quality. For example, Steve Mcgrath’s work is completely hilarious and has the audience in stitches every time.

This year Mr McGrath presents Four Crème Brulees on a Grand Piano, a play about the Dalai Lama meeting Salvador Dali. The Festival Director said there is also a wide range of topics in the collection but suicide and the afterlife are popular subjects. “Some ideas tend to lend themselves better to the 10-minute form such as speed dating,” he said.

Actors and directors flock to the festival for artistic exposure. “It’s a big event and very well known. The Top 100s get up to 500 people in the audience and Wildcards get up to 200 people.” Mr Malicki said the event is also important for networking with others in the industry.

Mr Di Fonzo said the mix of theatre is enticing. “It’s really the luck of the draw, it can work or it can’t work. Go along and watch 10 plays, you might like four of them but not like six of them or you might like all 10. It has eclecticism, it’s a gamble like all theatre, really.”

The playwright said the Festival also provides a practical function for writers and directors since some plays trialled in the 10-minute form become developed into full-length plays. “I’ve been in almost every one. I only missed two festivals,” he said.