CHOICE CUTS – NATIONAL PLAY FESTIVAL

It sounds like they’re hawking fresh meat … and in fact, that’s not far from the truth. Choice Cuts: National Play Festival is all about first taste-testing, and then basting in support and showcasing the best new playwriting Australia has got to offer. For the first time, in 2011 the action will take place on Sydney soils. Artistic director Chris Mead talks us through the wares, which include 150 ‘must-see’ minis, the full-length results of a 10-day workshopping program Fine Draft, and a mentored group of Sydney writers who call themselves ‘The Salon.’

What does playwriting landscape look like in Sydney, 2011? How do you think the festival experience might differ from Brisbane and Tasmania?

Theatre is booming in this town: from the DIY madness of something like Imperial Panda Festival to the variety on show at the Sydney Theatre, from a professional aesthetic in slightly uncomfortable seats at Sydney’s fringe venues to the tourist and consumer heaven of the Opera House, we are spoilt for choice. Sydney is noisy though and it can be tricky getting one’s voice heard, but that’s what the Play Festival is – respecting and privileging ingenious, inventive and amazing voices.

How important is workshopping to the playwriting process?

For plays to work the story has to be in the best, most playable shape possible and the Festival gets everyone on the same page – writers, creatives, actors and an audience. As everyone shares good ideas with a writer their brain is somehow able to assimilate it all, transmogrify it and make the play more robust and more powerful, whether it’s simple logic problems to the consistency and persuasiveness of story arcs. There’s nothing better than brilliant actors immersed in beautiful words and a great story and we all do our damndest to make it so.

What are you personally looking forward to the most?

Audiences. We do all this work thinking we know what people might like and how they might best understand the story, but there’s really only one genuine test, a real audience. Can’t wait.

What’s the strangest play you’ve had included in the line-up?

Theatre is all about the strange and wonderful, it’s kind of what theatre people eat and drink. We think it’s normal to spend the day discussing why two school girls kill another, why Dick Cheney is a 12 foot lizard, the differences between fighting dogs to the death and boxing, and rich businessmen buying a monkey menagerie for their daughters. And that’s just day one.

Home-written Australian theatre, in dire straits. Discuss.

Palm card one: No Australian theatre companies read newly-minted Aussie plays so there’s no direct way plays or playwrights can get to our stages. Few Australian plays are produced in a year here with the figure at a lowly 15-20%. No playwright works on staff at an Australian theatre company. Audiences know little about new writers because only a very small few are consistently produced.

Palm card two: We receive a heartening 500 plays a year. Fringe theatre is booming. Audiences love Australian stories. Australian stories are increasingly being seen on stages overseas. Playwrights are not only writing plays but driving some of Australia’s most watched TV and films. Plays offer arguably the best, most accessible new writing in the country. Playwrights are keen to take up the challenge of new writing, for entertainment, for political and cultural leadership and to lead to real change for good.

Names to watch?

Just for starters there’s: Van Badham, Reg Cribb, Caleb Lewis, Melissa Reeves, Sam Atwell, Jane Bodie, Stephen Carleton, Zoe Hogan, Kit Lazaroo, Shannon Murdoch, Kate Rice, Chris Summers, Roy Williams, Kit Brookman, Tahli Corin, Laura Hopkinson, Anna Houston, Tresa Ponnor, Rick Viede, Sala Abrahim, Candy Bowers, Alissar Chidiac, Roanna Gonsalves, Victoria Haralabidou, Alana Hicks, Teik Kim Pok, Saleh Saqqef, Katherine Yuen, Mei Tsering, Jess Bellamy, Amelia Evans, Dan Giovanani, Maree Freeman, Peter Lamb, Natalia Savvides . . .

You heard it here first, Alternative Media Group readers!  Now, get along to the Festival hub to see it before it hits the main stages of Australia.

Mar 15-19, Riverside Theatre, cnr Church & Market Sts, Parramatta, $20 (single ticket)-$35 (day pass), 8571 9177, nationalplayfestival.org.au/2011