Play, Me »

Other residencies: Performing Arts Residency | Visual Arts Residency

Queen Street Studio’s residency program for emerging playwrights and directors.

Applications for Play, Me:
»Closed: 5PM, 16 September 2011

— Showing: 28 November 2011

Play, Me is an opportunity for writers and directors to hothouse a script that is in the early stages of development.

Play, Me is supported by the City of Sydney and aims to build skills and nurture the development of new Australian theatrical work through an unproduced script, while supporting the dialogue between emerging writers and directors. This is a unique creative development opportunity to explore a script in its early stage that needs time, space and mentoring to get to the next stage.

The opportunity exists for 3 teams of writers and directors to participate in a creative development process over the months of October/November 2011.

Queen Street Studio Provides;

15 hours of free rehearsals space provided by Queen Street Studio at FraserStudios and/or Heffron Hall
A two-day Masterclass on the 15 and 16 October 2011
The opportunity to be mentored by 3 established artists; a writer, director and dramaturg
The opportunity to show 15 – 20 minutes of the developed work in an informal showing on the 28 November to peers and industry.

The Play, Me Mentors 2011

Director

Jo Turner is a director, writer and actor. He is a graduate of Melbourne University (B.A/B.COM) and L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. As a director he has particularly specialised in new work, both written and devised.

His credits as a director (devisor/dramaturg) include Fools Island, Director/Devisor/Dramaturg (TRS Bondi); The Graduate (with Jerry Hall), Associate Director/Casting (His Majesty’s Theatre Perth, Kay and McLean); Waiting for Godot (with Ian McKellen), Assistant Director/Casting (Aus/NZ) (Royal Theatre Haymarket, Kay and McLean); House on Fire, Director (ATYP), Nominated Best Show for Young People, Sydney Critics Awards; Darlingwood Tales, Dramaturg/Director (Sydney Opera House); Cubbyhouse, Dramaturg/Director (TRS Old Fitzroy); The No Chance in Hell Hotel, Dramaturg/Director (Darlinghurst Theatre/IPAC/Seymour Centre/Hong Kong); Mademoiselle Fifi, Devisor/Director (DarlinghurstTheatre); Don’t Stare too Much! (return season), Devisor/Director (Darlinghurst Theatre); Wed And Buried, Devisor/Director (Actor’s College Theatre and TV); Bookends 08 and 07, Director (ATYP and Sydney Writers Festival); Crossfire, Director (Ashfield Youth Theatre); The Stallion Of Death, Director (Short and Sweet 2008) Winner People’s Choice Award; Vanity Fair, Director (Actor’s College Theatre and TV); 2006 UWS Nepean Graduates’ Showcase Day, Director; Don’t Stare Too Much! (original season), Devisor/Director (Darlinghurst Theatre); Puntila And His Man Matti, Director (ATYP); Honestly, remount director (Hoiplloi Theatre, England and International Tour); Lolita, Director (Guild Theatre, Melbourne University).

Dramaturg

Cristin Kelly is a dramaturg that hails from the United States. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy/Theatre Criticism from the City University of New York and a BFA in Arts Administration from Brenau University. She most recently served as the Literary Manager of Florida Studio Theatre. She has also worked in the literary offices of the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta) and MCC Theater (Off-Broadway). Cristin spent three years as an adjunct professor at Ringling College of Art and Design and has taught playwriting to students in middle and high schools across the state of Florida. She currently runs The Australian Theatre Writers Project website, on which she publishes interviews with Australian playwrights.

Writer

Verity Laughton; Verity’s work has been produced in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, the UK and the USA. It includes main-stage adult dramas, a promenade community event, a musical, adaptations, plays for child and family audiences, as well as for dance, for puppets, for theatre of image and a ‘neutral script.’

Her plays include: The Ballad of Bonnie Wheeler; The Mourning After; Carrying Light; Burning; The Snow Queen; Koala Lou (musical); Gondwana; The Nargun and the Stars (both large scale puppetry) Awards include: AWGIE for Community Theatre, 2004 (The Lightkkeeper); The Griffin Prize, 2001 (Burning); AWGIE for Radio Drama, 2004 (Fox); Adelaide Critics’ Circle Best New Australian Play, 1999 (Carrying Light); Inscription Award, 2009 (The Ice Season). Two recent radio plays, Moon Door and Davy were nominated for the 2009 AWGIE Awards. The Nargun and the Stars was featured in both the 2009 Sydney Festival and the 2009 Perth International Festival. Latest Work: The Sweetest Thing (short-listed for the Griffin Award, the Rodney Seaborn Award and long-listed for the London Warehouse Festival Award) was performed at Belvoir Downstairs in October, 2010 and The Crate of Souls at the Adelaide College of the Arts in December 2010. She is a member of the 7-ON group of playwrights.

All inquiries to Samantha Chester on 0400 098 988:
sam@queenstreetstudio.com

“Play, Me” was previously known as “Off the Shelf”. See below the participants and blurbs…

OTS 1 | OTS 2 | OTS 3 | OTS 4 | Play, Me 1

Play, Me #1 October 2011
The Hiding Place	The Hiding Place, entails the storyline behind a reported disappearance, interrogation of the man who reported the disappearance, suspicions and the series of flashbacks of events. This mystery of the where about-s of the missing person comes as a twist.	Writer: Kendall Feaver Director: Kai Raisbeck
Dangerous Lenses	Dangerous Lenses, a poetic and image-based piece following the character’s witnessing of neglect and abuse. From afar she watches the outside characters and overcomes what she sees by acting in defence for her child.	Writer: Brooke Robinson Director: Georgia Symons
The Importance of Being Ernest Dragons and Other Classic Tales As Told By An Octopus	The Importance of Being Ernest Dragons and Other Classic Tales As Told By An Octopus, this multimedia live performance incorporating the setting of a junkyard theatre and creatively providing a new experience of story telling.	Writer: Alli Sebastian-Wolf Scarlet Director: McGlynn

Off the Shelf #1 May 2009
Harpoon	In an underwater world, things are not always what they seem.	Writer: Bridget Price Director: Mark Pritchard
Night maybe, or a road maybe	A brother and a sister on the road at night make a choice to go back or to continue into the night.	Writer: Kit Brookman Director: Amy Satchell
Gravity Waves	Ian Iva’s ready to help Leon Surat get in shape and get over his couch and his ex girlfriend- using a unique technique, Iva infiltrates the lives of those he helps and uses gravity waves as his tool.	Writer: Will Snow Director: Jonathan Wald
Boxing Day	Boxing Day, is set in the tiny seaside village of Tair Lair and is a mysterious, playful and intriguing family story. While ten-year-old Freya plots to keep her dad home from the oil rig a little longer, Nana Ditti is attached to her old transistor radio — dancing, and dreaming of Johnnie Ray. The plot twists and turns upside down on a fateful Boxing Day afternoon, when Age (Freya’s father) shoots a seagull and it falls from the sky like a rock. But instead of a dead bird, the pair discover a corpse washed up on the stony beach.	Writer: Phil Spencer Director: Scarlet McGlynn
Retale	The Store Manager is here to induct you into the store policy of clever selling- rocket into your dreams- the world of retail is not for the faint hearted and soon enough you’ll learn that retailers and astronauts have a lot in common.	Writer: Patrick Lenton Director: Anne-Maree Magi

Off the Shelf #2 November 2009
Combat Fatigue	Combat Fatigue is a dark incantation, a letter that shouldn’t be read, a blood sacrifice. A golden couple in a toxic city on Valentine’s Day. A husband, an artist, a soldier and a murderer with a poet’s heart battle it out for possession of a woman, Pippa’s soul.	Writer: Alison Rooke Director: Ian Zammit
Wretched Excess	When emotionally reclusive, yet highly successful young artist, Ash, falls for the vivacious free-spirited Lenka, a passionate, yet destructive relationship ensues - one that could ultimately prove the catalyst for a devastating act.	Writer: Stephen Graham Director: David Adlam
Of the Causes of Wonderful Things	Esther Drury is dealing with the disappearance of 5 children who have gone missing under her care. Her search for them leads to the uncovering of darkness, secrets and visions. The title is taken from a series of books published in the 1600’s about the causes of natural things occurring and contains one of the earliest descriptions of projection with a magic lantern.	Writer: Talya Rubin Director: Nick James
Zetland	In the family home they grew up in, two estranged brothers try to have a last meal before they are separated forever.	Writer: Jasper Marlow Director: Mark Pritchard

Off the Shelf and Into the Fringe #3 May 2010
Late Night Infomercials	Louise has been happily working at Infomercials since its inception but when a second sales presenter, David, is hired, the destructive nature of the products she’s selling is revealed to her and she is forced to choose between the surface with which she’s become accustomed and the darker reality that exists underneath.	Writer: Brooke Robinson Director: Lisa Eisman
Sexy Tales of Paleontology	Sexy Tales of Paleontology has everything you could possibly want in life: science, evil corporations and a lumberjack. When an innocent group of scientists are taken over by an unselfconsciously evil corporation, a clash of ethics and robots ensue. Expect hysterical geologists in pit fights with Paleontologists, flamboyant glam-pop mercenaries breaking out in song and the world’s worst narrator.	Writer: Patrick Lenton Director: Anne-Maree Magi
The Hideous Demise of Detective Slate	‘Temptation Keeps A Pistol In Her Panties’ The Hideous Demise of Detective Jericho Slate is a piece of film noir parody theatre; Imagine a 1940’s hardboiled detective radio serial traveled through time, but on the way it got mixed up with that nuclear waste that made the ninja turtles and grew legs and an incredible amount of convoluted similes and threw itself on the stage.When Doctor Blacks winds up corpsed in his laboratory on lighting hill, Miss Scarlett looks set to take the fall. She calls on lone wolf detective Jericho Slate to clear her name, but the only thing hotter than those legs is the secret she’s hiding.Could this case lead to the detective’s hideous demise? You betchya.	Writer: Alli Sebastian-Wolf Director: Jane Grimley
Peace at Last	With her mother gone and father nearing the end, Sarah is ready to bury the past. But her brother Paul returns determined to reignite the fire.	Writer: John AD Fraser Director: Lizzie Doyle

Off the Shelf #4 November 2010
Crushed	On December 12, 1988, Sunny Girl Susie turned sweet sixteen. Her boyfriend Jason gave her a Poison t-shirt, her best-friend Kelly gave her a name necklace, Kelly's boyfriend Dazza gave her a handful of pills.On December 12, 1988, Susie disappeared. Her body has not been found. Twenty-two years later, developers excavating nearby scrubland discover evidence that drags Jason, Kelly and Dazza back for the bleakest of high school reunions.	Writer: Melita Rowston Director: Lucinda Gleeson
The Loser of Hornsby	Shane is quite the proverbial arsehole. After an accident he moves home to convalesce at his mother’s urging. His hen-pecked father, Jim, puts a six-week time limit on the stay, for everyone’s sake. Many many years on, however, Shane is still there, inflicting SBS Russian news on his poor old dad, steadfastly ignoring the jobs and real estate sections of the paper that his dad leaves out for him every week, and bullying his mother into driving him to the pub so he can piss his pension up the wall. When the shady Booner comes to stay and Frank Sargeant joins the fray, the stage is set for disaster on an epic scale.	Writer: Andy Leonard Director: Helen Tonkin
Small Life	Small Life is about finding families in challenging places — on the streets and far away. A girl makes a living as a beggar and manager of beggars. Across the road from a famous cinema, she struggles to manage new relationships and old debts.	Writer: Zoe Hogan Director: Paige Rattray
In the Company of Dead Cats	After desperately seeking relief in any form from the grief caused by the death of a dear friend, Michael - Ray, Lily and Daniel are meeting for the first time since Michael's funeral, three months ago, in the flat the four of them had shared. Never the most stable judges of social ettiqute, the three find there's comfort to be found in the accidental maiming of domestic pets	Writer: Emrys Quinn Director: Carolyn Eccles