Melborn 08: Playspotting
Melbourne Writers' Theatre
27 September 2008
Carlton Courthouse
The Melbourne Writers’ Theatre is a wonderful organisation dedicated to developing, promoting and showcasing Australian script writing. Following the success of the 2007 MelBorn short play festival, I was looking forward to MelBorn08: Playspotting.
Playspotting is 12 short plays, selected from 138 entries, featuring 11 directors and 15 actors. With such a large group of creatives, the quality and standard are always going to vary, and this years’ crop ranged from outstanding to woeful.
Jane Miller’s A Cup of Sugar was my highlight of the evening. Every time I see something she writes, I’m engaged and moved. Miller reveals extraordinary stories in ordinary lives, creates authentic, empathetic characters, and forces them to make unthinkable decisions and choices. In this work, her characters have no choice but to tell heartbreaking lies that we can see staying with them for ever.
What made
this work stand above the rest is that I cared about her characters and their stories.
In so many other Playspotting plays, the characters were simply a means
for the author to tell us a joke, preach an opinion or show off their
knowledge. This resulted in too many clichéd, one-dimensional or simply forgettable
characters – including an over-representation of poor, downtrodden,
misunderstood artist protagonists.
There were
some amazing, original and insightful ideas in all the scripts. The writing
talent is obvious, but some were trying so hard to be original that that forgot
to tell a story or just weren’t ready to be performed. Many felt like early drafts,
and I have to wonder if the MWT work shopping and feedback processes are
vigorous (or honest) enough.
At three hours,
MelBorn08: Playspotting is a long haul, twelve
stories are a lot to think about and – despite appreciating the work of every
artist involved – I was disappointed in the result.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
