Putting on a show… 235 plays in a day

Arts Correspondent

Monday 20 June 2011

MORE than 200 plays are to be performed in one 24-hour show –in what is the most ambitious production the National Theatre of Scotland has ever attempted.

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Phil Miller Arts Correspondent

Tomorrow at 5pm will see the premiere of The Gods Are Watching, by Horsecross Arts, the first five-minute play in a 24-hour period that will see 235 new plays performed -- all of them commissioned to celebrate the fifth birthday of the NTS.

On 5pm the following day, the aptly-named Shutdown, by Lawrence Clark, will close out the theatrical marathon, which is seeking not only live audiences in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, but a worldwide audience online.The five-minute theatre pieces will feature more than 1000 performers across 11 countries.Of these, not all are to be broadcast live: 120 have already been pre-recorded, with a handful more, including some in Scotland, still to be performed and captured on film. There will be five-minute plays from Sydney -- which will be live, if an internet connection holds up -- Paraguay, Mexico, the US, Italy, Belgium, India, and no less than seven shows from China.Performers and writers include a mix of professionals and amateurs: poets, primary school pupils and film-makers, families, community groups and teenagers, visual artists, carers, professional theatre-makers and expectant mothers. Marianne Maxwell, project co-ordinator of the Five Minute Theatre project, which will be streamed on STV.tv, said she was confident the technology involved, and the flipping between the theatrical “hubs” of performance at The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, Adam House Theatre in Edinburgh and the CCA in Glasgow will be relatively seamless.“Everyone involved in the live performances is an experienced stage manager, and even if something does happen, like the internet goes down in one of the ‘roving’ locations, we can slot in a pre-recorded play and juggle with the running order a little bit,” she said. “We have tested everything this week so we are feeling confident it will work.“We had a filming day this week and saw eight of the plays back-to-back. It was exciting to see what people were doing with the five-minute format -- some of the writing was fantastic, it really blew me away.”Plays have been filmed or will be performed in an array of sites, including hotel bedrooms, farmyards, forests, gardens, parks, bedrooms, tree-houses, kitchens, park benches, rooftops, libraries, trains, cafes, offices, shop windows and even a cave.In Hello You, Sharron Devine will explore the role of the expectant mother, while the actor Tam Dean Burn, in Within Walls and Without, will, in a solo performance, reflect on solitary confinement and its use as a method of torture. In Human Boggle, Martha Burns Findlay will present “an interactive interpretation” of the well-known word game Boggle.Shanghai-based dancer Liu Yanan has never danced alone for her mother, so her Dance For Mom will be for her. She said: “I think most performers have never done this, perform for their mom. It seems the easiest but the most difficult thing to do, to communicate with the closest person through performance. I’d like to dance for my mom, only for her.”The Paraguayan artist, Paolo Irun, will perform a five-minute street theatre performance during the morning rush-hour in downtown Asuncion -- Paraguay’s capital -- at the Hero’s Pantheon. In Wedding Night, the audience will see actors, playing Prince William and his new bride, spend their turbulent fictional wedding night at the Blythswood Hotel in Glasgow.Unable to shake off the press pack, a waiter is enlisted to help in their quest for privacy.Visit www.fiveminutetheatre.com for more information on free tickets to the three “hubs”, as well as the running order.

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Putting on a show… 235 plays in a day

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