Been having a blast attending different shows at this year’s Short+Sweet. For those who don’t know what Short+Sweet is, it is the world’s largest short play festival. All plays are strictly limited to 10 minutes and it is also a competition among participants to see who put on the best play of the year. Short+Sweet has been around for 9 years and is going from strength to strength. Maybe one day it will become like Tropfest, something that attracts more and more international attention (at the time of writing, Short+Sweet is already starting up in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand).
I’ve never been in any Short+Sweet production but in the last two years got involved as one of the adjudicators. Still remember how flattered I was when I got the invitation. Many people asked me how come I got to be an adjudicator when I’ve never been involved in any production. Well not to blow my own horn, I do have a formal qualification in Theatre and am a fully trained dramaturg (though not many theatre companies can afford to employ us). But this is not about me it’s about all the people who bleed and sweated to put the festival together. Alex Broun has been at the helm as an artistic director the last few years and with him and Mark Clearly, the scale of Short+Sweet was just ever expanding.
Going to Short+Sweet is like going to a restaurant that provides only set menus according to the ingredients available on the day. So you are really in for some surprises from time to time. One week it could be really short and sweet, while some others they could be “Short+Missed”. Productions that managed to squeeze into the main program will usually be staged for a week. Audience will vote for their favourite play of the night and the judges will rank the plays according to (for me) writing, staging, direction and performance. Productions that got into the Wild Card sessions are more like in a sudden death judgement situation – one performance to determine whether they can enter the second round and thus from the second round to the Final Gala.
I had a great time judging on Short+Sweet. It is good to see so many people writing and putting themselves out there. However with the massive number of productions squeezed into around 8 weeks, you bound to have disappointments from time to time. For me disappointments can come in several ways:
Writing:
Mediocre and generic writing is one of the deadly sins in Short+Sweet. Sometimes you felt you have seen it all and the dialogues are as tasteless as filtered water. At times you will get plays that swore their heads off throughout the whole 10 minutes, and even after that you still don’t know why they needed to swear. I know this is Australia but do Australians just swear that much for the sake of swearing? I remember this year there was a production that uses the “c” word repeatedly. I am not against swearing or the “c” word specifically but then my company and I were looking at each other wondering what were they doing?
Staging and Directions:
This year I have seen a lot of productions using an extremely boring approach in terms of staging and directions. This is not limited to Short+Sweet but also to some amateur theatre productions. The most commonly seen approach is to just have people walking across the stage again and again for the sake of using the stage space. However, because they are walking to and fro that much, you just got distracted because you couldn’t figure out why they were doing so. Staging doesn’t necessarily means you have to use all the space available – use it only if it enriches your story telling. I remember in one of the productions this year, the two ladies were just using a small stage front area next to a double deck trolley most of the time and it worked extremely well. The other well-staged production involved placing the actors symmetrically on the stage. They only move out of their space when they needed to interact or when it was required to move the story forward. That was a pleasure to watch. However, there were quite a number of productions where they just have actors running around on the stage “doing their stuff” and after 10 minutes you felt more exhausted than they did.
Performance:
One of the common issues I found in Short+Sweet performances is the actors’ voice. Being a voice student for over 3 years now made me really pay attention to what came out of actors’ mouths. I remember in one of the productions, there were four actors. Two of them were spectacular but the other two were just awful whenever they opened their mouth. The words came out were mostly inaudible and one of them spoke so quickly that you just felt like popcorns were coming out of her mouth. There was another production where there were non-English speaking actors delivering lines in English. However, they were so heavily accented that it was quite difficult to understand what they were saying. Being someone from a non-English speaking background I know how difficult it is, but then when it comes to performing life, this is really something that need to be addressed – seriously. There were other productions that even when I was sitting on the second or fourth row, I couldn’t hear a word from the actors. Now I am not saying they need to yell cause I hate people just yelling for no reason and I’d seen too much of them on Australian stage and screen already. But clear articulation and projection are essential for all stage performers and I don’t think that is something a stage actor can get away with. To cite a good performance this year is the girl who was in the play about ranting. Her projection and articulations were clear but she managed to put so many dimensions and layers into the ranting that it was just enjoyable.
The Short+Sweet Final Gala will be held on 12 and 13 March this year and unfortunately I won’t be able to attend. But I am sure the program will be a wonderful and entertaining. It sounds like I am very critical when it comes to judging but I do think as a member of the local theatre and acting scene, I do need to be critical about our work so we can make improve each time. I enjoyed most of the program this year and there were certainly some really good stuff among them. So if you have missed Short+Sweet this year, remember to mark your calendar for next year’s festival. After all what is better than a night of aspiring theatre?
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