Short+Sweet, the largest festival of 10-minute plays in the world, will open its second local edition in Dubai with 70 short plays from tomorrow until February 22, culminating in a gala finale.
The concept is certainly short and sweet: playwrights and directors get 10 minutes to convey a story and their actors have to execute it within that time limit or risk disqualification.
A play in 10 minutes?
After a successful inaugural festival last year, the Australian playwright Alex Broun has brought the fast-theatre concept back to Dubai with more participants. “There is a tremendous amount you can do in 10 minutes,” says Broun, the director of Short+Sweet Dubai. “Life is a lot faster than it was in Shakespeare’s, Tennessee Williams’s or Anton Chekhov’s time. The audience absorbs faster than it did 200 years ago.”
Broun first began writing concise plays in 2000, after which he joined Short+Sweet to help create interest in the format. He has written 100 10-minute plays which have been produced in more than 30 countries.
“There are very few opportunities for local writers to perform their work in Dubai,” says Broun. “There is this culture of importing theatre in Dubai, sometimes of dubious quality. There are really talented actors and writers whose work hasn’t been seen on the main stage. That is what this festival aims to do.”
Lessons for amateur artists
Short+Sweet was started in Sydney in 2002 to allow theatre enthusiasts to showcase their work as well as hone their skills through workshops held before the festival. The event always ends with a gala finale where the 10 best plays compete for best actor, director, writer and theatre company awards.
“The idea is to value every second in theatre,” says Broun. “Amateurs in theatre waste time on stage and participating in the festival makes them more disciplined. They have to maximise every second because we are tough in judging. The play needs to end in 10 minutes or they will be disqualified. The wonderful thing is that participants can create a play on any subject they like.”
Festival organisers received more than 100 entries from local artists this year, from which the best scripts and theatre groups were selected to be part of the festival. Resident performers had the option of submitting their own plays or selecting from a pool of scripts that the festival provides. This year, more than 70 per cent of the plays are written by writers in town.
The workshop
Liz Hadaway, the associate festival director of Short+Sweet, ran a six-week workshop leading up to the festival. The first three weeks were dedicated to teaching basics such as vocal skills, teamwork and stage relationships. During the past three weeks, two plays were produced that will be wild card entries.
“These are basic acting workshops for beginners and lower intermediates,” says Hadaway. “We also ran weekend workshops on acting, script writing and directing.”
Broun says because there is so little time to draw the audience in, each play must be crisply written, with interesting characters and compelling dialogue. “The secret to a good play has a three-stage set-up: grab the audience’s attention; an escalation, where something needs to happen; and pay-off, where you conclude the story you are telling.”
All the world’s a stage
Short+Sweet, which encourages applications for plays in different languages, is now seeing more international theatre groups, including from the United States, India and Pakistan, so expect productions in Arabic, Hindi and English. Theatre companies from Dubai include Backstage, Dubai Drama Group, Third Half Theatre and Theatrewallas Production. Other emirates are in attendance, too: Abu Dhabi’s Resuscitation Theatre and House of Tigzirt are participating, while Sharjah is represented by Tagrids Theatre and Ancienne Majan Cinematographie. Also on the list is Ras Al Khaimah Amateur Dramatic Society.
Sanjeev Dixit, the president of Third Half Theatre Company in Dubai, will be presenting Badke Bhaiya, an adaptation of the 19th-century Indian author Munshi Premchand’s short story Bade Bhai Sahab.
“The story has a mix of Hindi and English elements,” says Dixit. “But it won’t be difficult for the audience to follow the plot even if they don’t know the language. It’s a nice way for us to show rustic India without having to speak an anachronistic language. It’s something the international audience will appreciate.”
Dixit says this is a good opportunity to raise the profile of local theatre. “We are trying really hard to make local theatre more relevant and to that effect, this has allowed more writers to showcase their work.”
Waleed Chaudhry, the president of the dramatics society at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan, will put on a play titled Death Takes the Train.
“It is about three friends who encounter the Grim Reaper on a train and their discussion about life and death,” says Chaudhry, adding that his group of six is attempting the format for the first time. “I think performing 10-minute plays is more difficult. You have a limited time to send the message across and please the audience.”
Short+Sweet Dubai is at Centrepoint Theatre at Ductac, Mall of the Emirates, from tomorrow until February 22. All shows start at 8pm except for the wild card rounds, which are at 3pm. The gala finale is on February 22 at 7pm. Tickets cost Dh100. For more information, call 04 341 4777 or visit www.shortandsweet.org/festivals/shortsweet-theatre-dubai
[ aahmed@thenational.ae ]
