Come see.
May 12th @7:30,
Questors Theatre, Ealing
5 brand new plays will be written, rehearsed and performed…again.
The first installment…
On March 2nd at 8:30am 5 writers gathered at The Picture House in Ealing and armed with with nothing more than (randomly chosen) head shots, their laptops and the theme, “What’s New?” they bravely began writing the one act plays that would become the evening’s offering. Bold huh?
The actors, directors and director’s assistants assembled at Drama Studio London waiting for the plays to be printed and randomly chosen by the directors…
So they can start rehearsal! Drama Studio London was the creative center where five plays were simultaneously taken from table read to ready shows…
Curtain up at QUESTORS.
So what is the Same Day Plays, day of plays…?
It’s a theater experiment built to capture the essence of immediate and instinctual theater by following all the traditional steps of building a play, and then removing the luxury of time.
Our Format:
8:30am– Playwrights assemble at Ealing Picture House and randomly choose 2 head shots and begin writing a one act play, 6-7 pages long.
12:30- Plays are delivered, Directors and Actors arrive to Drama Studio London.
1pm-Directors randomly choose a play, find their rehearsal room, table read and rehearse.
7pm- Questors opens the house, audience fills the theater to the brim.
7:30pm- Curtain up
8:45ish – Curtain closes
So, why the rushed schedule?
This is our attempt to answer the age old theatre questions; “Is it possible to remove expectations and worry over results and create theater that is pure execution? Is there a way to insure that every artist works only from their instinct in creating a play?”
Now, what if an evening was created by randomly pairing artists and have them create new plays under a nearly impossible timeline. Would it remove the luxury of thinking and engage their every artistic instinct necessary to pull off creating a show that didn’t exist before 9am that morning?
This is our attempt to test that out.
It’s surely an experiment, and we are hoping it will teach us about our theatrical community. Who in their right mind would agree to blindly leap into the discomfort of taking this very unconventional approach to our well established practice? What will they learn about themselves and their process for creating?
The audience is treated to the end of all that momentum when the curtain goes up and what happens is as fresh and immediate as possible. No one really knows what the outcome will be. The shared journey of unpredictability makes each performance a unique experience.
Sounds wild, right?
We won’t be listing our participants but we do promise that all our players are London theatre veterans of varied cultures and generations who have written for, starred in, or directed things you’d be impressed by. One of them won a BAFTA. Not kidding.
Since we don’t know what the writer’s will write it’s probably best you don’t bring your under 18 child.
We hope you can make it!
This is a community theatre project. Picture House Cinema, Questors, and Drama Studio London, all Ealing based theatre entities, are teaming up to make a wild day of theater exploration happen!
