Dunedin theatre-lovers are needed to play theatre critic this weekend. No audition required.
Stage South launches its latest round of "Write Out Loud" performances at the Fortune Theatre and the audience is an integral part of the creative process.
It promises to be a character-building experience.
"`Write Out Loud' makes sure we find the talent that's already in our own backyard," Stage South co-ordinator Clare Adams says.
"Like, the plays being read this weekend are by two local people we didn't even know were interested in theatre. It's about exposing audiences to New Zealand drama that is being written, but is not necessarily getting produced."
Stage South is a collective of Dunedin theatre practitioners, including writers, directors, actors, producers and designers, which was established two years ago to encourage local theatrework.
"We hope that the plays being read will be taken to production level. We want to grow them, like we did with Glorious," Adams says.
Glorious was written by University of Otago theatre studies teaching fellow Richard Huber and has just completed a critically-acclaimed season at the Fortune.
"For me, as a writer, having the readings was a very valuable process. Glorious came about through that process. It gave me a chance to really develop the script," Huber says.
"You can write in isolation, but you need an audience to really see what works and why. Theatre is like sport.
"You have people performing live and sweating in front of you showing their skills. You can make the play better with an audience involved.
"It's not just good for the writer, it's also good for the audience. The audience has a sense of involvement and investment in it.
"Getting an audience in and hearing everyone's opinions means the audience is part of the development.
"It's also important that these plays are generated in our local economy with a local `making' system. We need our stories on stage and to be a fully-productive `making' culture as well."
Dunedin actor and Stage South founding member Barbara Power was involved in the first reading of Glorious.
"For actors, it's a fantastic way to experience a new script. All you can do is read the words, so you really see the writer's vision.
"Whereas, once you get on stage you kind of add your own layers to the character. That's what an actor does," she says.
"The evolution of Stage South and `Write Out Loud' has been very positive for Dunedin theatre and actors.
"It's part of the evolution of finding our voices in New Zealand theatre."
However, the reading process could also be a chastening experience, Otago Daily Times assistant editor Simon Cunliffe says.
Cunliffe began writing his first play, The Truth Game, in 2005 and has seen it hardened on the hammer and anvil of public critique.
The play is set in a traditional newsroom as the new digital era begins to assert itself.
"I've always been a bit of a scribbler and I wanted to celebrate the characters in newspapers - the reporters and subs - before they've all disappeared," he said.
"The play is filled with the gallows-type humour that seems to dominate newsrooms. You know; it's a quiet day with no news and a plane crashes and everyone goes `Hooray!'."
After an outing at the inaugural "Write Out Loud" in 2006, The Truth Game was selected last year, following a redraft, for the Auckland Theatre Company's prestigious "Next Stage" programme, which involved a two-week workshop and readings at the Maidment Theatre.
"That enabled me to get some sense of shape," Cunliffe says.
"Does it work dramatically? Are the characters real? Does it have structure? Is it about something that people find interesting?
" A play doesn't have to follow the rules. The truth it's trying to impart is your personal truth. The big challenge was making a drama with real people, lives and concerns. The thing is to have something to say, but not push it. Let it come through in the characters.
"The Auckland experience was quite bruising, to be honest, but it was also very revealing. It took me several months to digest it all.
"But, it's a real privilege and a great experience having actors and a director taking your work seriously.
"It let me see it in ways I hadn't before. Sometimes the most off-the-wall suggestion can be the seed for a critical breakthrough."
The resultant draft of Cunliffe's play was read earlier this month as part of Stage South's "Read Out Loud" programme, which brings contemporary New Zealand plays to local audiences.
"If you're interested in theatre, it's much more arresting than you'd imagine. It's a reading with different voices - like a radio play."
Be part of it
The Stage South "Write Out Loud" performances in the Fortune Theatre Studio this weekend are:
Sunday, 1pm: The Middlemarch Singles Ball by "Ella West" (Karen Trebilcock). The Middlemarch Singles Ball committee realises all of the tickets have been sold to single women who are expecting to meet real rural blokes. Panicking, they try to find some single men to come, but all of the Middlemarch locals have been married off to women from previous balls. The only men the committee can find are, unfortunately, from Auckland. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead in the Middlemarch community is purely coincidental. Aucklanders, however, are fair game.
Sunday, 3pm: The Marquess of Toodle Do by Paul Baker. It's November 1962 and the Churchill family is grandly dysfunctional. Randolph hosts a birthday luncheon for his elderly father, Sir Winston, where he asks about the break-up of his first marriage, while his sister, Sarah, announces her controversial new relationship. A contemporary take on the drawing-room drama, with a famous family splitting at the seams.
Tickets are $5 and afternoon tea will be provided.
