235 five minute theatre pieces selected for live online broadcast
over 1,000 performers across 11 countries
5.00pm, Tuesday 21st June – 5.00pm, Wednesday 22nd June, 2011
www.fiveminutetheatre.com
TODAY, Monday 18th April, 2011, National Theatre of Scotland is delighted to announce that 235 five minute theatre pieces have been selected to take part in an extraordinary 24hour online broadcast of live theatre, taking place on Tuesday 21st June 2011, from 5pm until 5pm the following day.
National Theatre of Scotland’s Five Minute Theatre project will feature over 1,000 performers in 11 countries. Of the 235 successful entries, 202 will be performed in Scotland, 13 across the rest of the UK, four in Europe and 16 across the rest of the world.
Those selected include poets, primary school pupils and film-makers; families, community groups and teenagers; visual artists, carers, professional theatre-makers and expectant mothers based in areas from Paisley, Paraguay and Govan to Milan, Orkney and New York; Brighton, Brussels and Dalkeith to London, Shanghai and Edinburgh; Mumbai, Livingston and Beijing.
Five to 65 year-olds will take part in five minute long theatre pieces located indoors and out, in farmyards, forests, gardens and parks to bedrooms, tree-houses, kitchens, park benches, roof tops, public libraries, trains, cafes, offices, art galleries, shop windows and a cave.
Professional or amateur, young or old, absolutely anyone has been encouraged to take part by writing, devising, directing, performing and producing a piece of theatre, five minutes long. There are no set skills or qualifications required other than a good idea, dramatic flair, and some bravery!
Marianne Maxwell, audience development manager, National Theatre of Scotland, commented: “The response to Five Minute Theatre from all over the world has been fantastic.There is a huge range of ideas from a huge range of people. The creativity of each submission promises live and virtual audiences 24 hours of short, original, funny and brilliant entertainment on June 21st.”
Hello You…: In the bedroom of her Edinburgh tenement flat, expectant mother, Sharron Devine, will perform a five-minute monologue to her unborn child.
Sharron said: “I am currently 32 weeks pregnant with my first baby and Hello You…is a small insightful slice of theatre all about the little life growing inside me – my hopes, my fears and my anticipations about my baby and what it means to me to finally becoming a mother.”
Theatre Within Walls and Without: Theatre maker, Tam Dean Burn, has created and will feature in a solo performance exploring the nature of solitary confinement as a method of torture.
The piece will be presented as part of a cultural campaign which he is currently developing with stopisolation.org.
Tam says: “A key element of this project is the novel of incarceration and reincarnation, The Star Rover by Jack London, which I am adapting for performance and my Five Minute Theatre piece spring from this.”
Human Boggle: Aspiring Glasgow-based physical theatre maker, Martha Burns Findlay, will present an interactive interpretation of the well-known word game Boggle. Describing her five-minute theatre piece as a “fun, bizarre and participative performance that uses physical theatre, clowning and melodrama set to a backdrop of ragtime music that all ages will enjoy”.
Human Boggle represents the development of an earlier work, Human Bingo, and will feature fellow physical theatre performers and audience members. Human Boggle will subsequently be performed as part of a games event for Scottish Refugee Week on Saturday 25th June.
DANCE FOR MOM: Although she frequently performs in front of large audiences in her chosen career as a professional dancer, Shanghai-based Liu Yanan has never danced for her mother. Liu explains: “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.”
Beurgerfest 2011: Representing the culmination of an exchange project between Regensburg, Germany and Aberdeen, 20 young performers from both cities will come together in Regensburg city centre to stage street theatre pieces inspired by Philip Pullman’s novella, Clockwork.
The exchange project is run by Aberdeen Performing Arts, Visible Fictions and Aberdeen City Council.
COMMERCIAL BREAK: “Well, if you guys are going to be broadcasting all day, I think you’re almost definitely going to need at least one commercial break!” From his London home, David Lees will be re-creating Scottish TV advertsm including There’s a Moose Loose aboot this Hoose and Tennents’ Caledonia advert which he says, “always makes me cry”.
The Garibaldi Paradox: Two elderly women on mobility scooters have the friendship put to the test when one tries to convince the other that she has inherited the ability to travel through time.
Written by Colin Hough and featuring a cast of professional actors including Alison Peebles and Anne Lacey, the piece will be staged outdoors on the Clydeside promenade of the newly-restored Harbour District.
Colin explains: “The action will be played out on the move, against a backdrop of glass fronted, penthouse apartments. The audience will walk alongside the characters as they manoeuvre their mobility scooters along the promenade.”
PARAGUAY? YES, PARAGUAY! WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?: Paraguayan artist, Paolo Irun will stage his five minute street theatre performance during the morning rush-hour, in front of one of the most emblematic historical buildings in downtown, Asuncion – Paraguay’s capital – the Hero’s Pantheon.
Paolo explains: “I’m a Paraguayan artist living and working in New York City and the director and creator of this experimental, collaborative, multidisciplinary and multicultural devised theatre piece about identity.”
Paolo will collaborate with fellow artists in New York and Paraguay to develop the piece.
Adding that “little is known about our theatre and our artists”, Paolo hopes his Five Minute Theatre piece will offer a glimpse of his native country’s cultural vibrance.
The Last Supper: At a farm in deepest Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland, 26 year-old performance poet Michael Pedersen is basing the premise of his Five Minute Theatre piece The Last Supper, on a conversation that occurs between a cow and a young lad completing his paper-round.
MY BLACK DOG: In a monologue delivered from a park bench, stand-up comic, David Innes, will recount personal experiences of dealing with the highs and lows caused by depression.
APE: 57 year-old Robert Sian’s Five Minute Theatre piece, Ape will take place in a town square in Belgium. Robert describes the scene: “A well-dressed man appears in the town square – he metamorphoses into an ape – going through the various stages (backwards) of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
He returns from whence he came – begging the question – what has he achieved?”
WEDDING NIGHT: Prince William and his new bride, Kate, are spending their wedding night in a hotel. Unable to shake off the press pack, a waiter is enlisted to help in their quest for privacy. His intentions however, are far from benign. Film and theatre-maker, Hope Dickson Leachm has conceived Wedding Night as a promenade piece.
Audience members will be given cameras and asked to record moments as they glimpse the royal couple as they make their way through the hotel.
The actors will respond to the audience as they perform. Hope says: “I’m excited by the idea of creating a piece of filmed live theatre, where the audience participates in a way that I hope will add tension – as well as being fun for them.”
And Start Again: A couple argue on a Glasgow train. Knowing he’s in the wrong, the man begins to sing an impromptu apology to his girlfriend – he wants to ‘Rip It Up’ and start again. Martin Brocklebank asks: “Can she forgive him…in the space of two stops?” and wonders: “How will an unsuspecting audience react to this spontaneous performance?”
Other pieces include a worker performing in an office at five minutes to 5pm while he waits for his computer to shut down; librarians in a public library arguing over the purpose of literature; a seven year-old writer/director leading fellow primary school pupils in a piece called THE PLANET OF TERROR; two teenage boys who find themselves on a rooftop in the middle of the night, musing on their place in the universe and students staging a surreal comedy in which a group of squirrels attempt to land on the moon in a rocket made from a tree.
Further information and updates can be found at www.fiveminutetheatre.com. The complete running order and filming schedule will be announced Friday 20th May.
National Theatre of Scotland will be working in partnership with STV to enable eight of the successful Five Minute Theatre projects to be performed and filmed at STV’s studio at Pacific Quay, Glasgow. The 24-hour online event will be streamed live on the website especially created by the National Theatre of Scotland for the project: www.fiveminutetheatre.com and STVs own website: www.stv.tv on Tuesday 21st June.
Individual entries will be hosted online by both www.stv.tv on a specially designed micro-site and www.fiveminutetheatre.com after the event.
Rob Woodward, chief executive, STV, said: “I am delighted that STV will make Five Minute Theatre available to our audience on stv.tv. STV is committed to the establishment of a vibrant creative industry sector in Scotland and this innovative 24-hour online broadcast is set to be a fantastic showcase of Scottish talent and originality.”
FOR FURTHER PRESS INFO/IMAGES/INTERVIEWS/FOOTAGE, CONTACT:
Wendy Grannon, Press Manager (maternity leave)
Tel: +44 (0) 141 227 9016 E: wendy.grannon@nationaltheatrescotland.com
Andrew Neilson, Press Officer
Tel: +44 (0) 141 227 9497 E: andrew.neilson@nationaltheatrescotland.com
NOTES TO EDITORS:
1. The National Theatre of Scotland is supported by the Scottish Government. Since its launch in February 2006, the National Theatre of Scotland has been involved in creating over 137 productions in 125 different locations. With no building of its own, the company takes theatre all over Scotland and beyond, working with existing and new venues and companies to create and tour theatre of the highest quality. It takes place in the great buildings of Scotland, but also in site-specific locations, airports and tower blocks, community halls and drill halls, ferries and forests. The company has performed to almost 600,000 people, across three continents.
2. The latest Five Minute Theatre news can be followed on Twitter: twitter.com/NTSonline and Facebook: facebook.com National Theatre of Scotland where participants can ask questions, share ideas and tips and connect with other theatre-makers.
3. Envirodigital is consultant producer for Five Minute Theatre http://envirodigital.com. Envirodigital is a lighthouse brand, guiding the creative and digital industries in a sustainable direction through the use of digital tools and technologies. Edinburgh-based Envirodigital helps organisations create economically and ecologically sustainable digital developments. Envirodigital helped to establish the new National Theatre Wales’ digital and environmental policies, and is helping to ensure many Scottish organisations’ and events’ environmental sustainability through providing webcasting production and consultancy. http://envirodigital.com
4. STV reaches over four million viewers each month, STV brings viewers first class programming, including Emmerdale and Coronation Street, crime drama Taggart, live guests and features on The Hour, entertainment hits The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, strong home-grown productions and comprehensive news. STV’s digital channels attract over two million unique users per month and incorporates website stv.tv, home to news, sport and entertainment; STV Player, where you can catch up with your favourite STV programmes; and STV Local, a network of hyper-local websites which is being rolled out across Scotland. Last year, STV announced a distribution deal with YouTube, making STV content available to a global audience.
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Contact: Andrew Neilson
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Email: andrew.neilson@nationaltheatrescotland.com
Website: http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com
