WHAT ARE THE ONE HOUR PLAYS?
You may have heard of the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays... Plays written and performed in 24hrs? Big deal.
The Matey Institute presents The One Hour Plays! With copious help from our audience, each play is conceived, devised, costumed, scripted and performed before your very eyes - complete with a freshly composed score! Art Attack meets Anneka Rice with live playwriting, this is a richly sensory spectacle which lays bare the nuts and bolts of the theatre in all its eccentricity.
A master-class in how to put on a production, and an exercise in frenetic creativity under unbelievable pressure.
The Matey Institute presents The One Hour Plays! With copious help from our audience, each play is conceived, devised, costumed, scripted and performed before your very eyes - complete with a freshly composed score! Art Attack meets Anneka Rice with live playwriting, this is a richly sensory spectacle which lays bare the nuts and bolts of the theatre in all its eccentricity.
A master-class in how to put on a production, and an exercise in frenetic creativity under unbelievable pressure.
IS THERE A 28 SECOND VIDEO OF IT I CAN WATCH?
BUT HOW DOES THAT ALL WORK?!
Bereft of inspiration, we start our show with nothing -– no script, no ideas, no direction. We may not have a clue, but we do have a seamstress, a writer, a painter, a musician, a director and three actors... And what we lack in material, we more than make up for in enthusiasm and derring-do. With suggestions from the audience we create the characters, improvise the plot, make the costumes, write the script, compose the score and take over the world.
With the first gem of audience input we start a 60-minute countdown and it’s all hands on deck. What ensues is a high-octane flurry of creativity with live playwriting (projected real-time onto a screen), costume making (our pimped up silvercross pram complete with hand-operated Singer sewing machine is a show on its own), prop making (we invite the audience to dig into our craft boxes and create the props) and rehearsing. At the forty minute point the writer MUST have finished and the script MUST be printed exactly as it is at that second. The actors are each handed a script and the ten minute three-act play begins.
And when The One Hour Plays hit the summer festivals our full contingent are on hand to make sure every section of show is adequately full of fun. The audience can come and go as they please. They might stay for the whole ride and watch as we dash from concept to production in one hour. They might amble in at the end and be wowed by our fully staged and scripted play. They might only catch the middle and watch our seamstress whizzing up a frenzy on her Singer as our actors practise their accents and our writer types with fiendish abandon. Whenever they drop by, whichever snippet they see, we guarantee a richly sensory spectacle which lays bare the nuts and bolts of the theatre in all its eccentricity!
With the first gem of audience input we start a 60-minute countdown and it’s all hands on deck. What ensues is a high-octane flurry of creativity with live playwriting (projected real-time onto a screen), costume making (our pimped up silvercross pram complete with hand-operated Singer sewing machine is a show on its own), prop making (we invite the audience to dig into our craft boxes and create the props) and rehearsing. At the forty minute point the writer MUST have finished and the script MUST be printed exactly as it is at that second. The actors are each handed a script and the ten minute three-act play begins.
And when The One Hour Plays hit the summer festivals our full contingent are on hand to make sure every section of show is adequately full of fun. The audience can come and go as they please. They might stay for the whole ride and watch as we dash from concept to production in one hour. They might amble in at the end and be wowed by our fully staged and scripted play. They might only catch the middle and watch our seamstress whizzing up a frenzy on her Singer as our actors practise their accents and our writer types with fiendish abandon. Whenever they drop by, whichever snippet they see, we guarantee a richly sensory spectacle which lays bare the nuts and bolts of the theatre in all its eccentricity!
