Every independent company in Brisbane knows the struggle of finding an affordable venue. In fact, many professional companies experience the same difficulty when it comes to venues. (Anyone remember the furore when Sir Ian McKellen’s Waiting for Godot couldn’t come to Brisbane because we didn’t have a large enough theatre available for it to play here?)
One passionate theatre maker decided not to sit around waiting for a venue to become available, he decided instead to create a festival that didn’t use venues at all.
Paul Osuch is the force behind Anywhere Theatre Festival, a ten-day festival planned for 5-14 May, 2011. It is the first theatre festival to get around the lack of theatre venues in Brisbane by only allowing productions that don’t use them.
Shows can be anywhere – a park, a backyard, a bedroom, an elevator, a street, a train, on twitter, even Second Life. Anywhere except a “traditional” venue.
I first spoke to Paul last year, when he was looking for a permanent venue for his new company Jam & Bread. After a number of near misses, his search came to a disappointing end and he decided to think outside the box and outside the confines of traditional theatre spaces. Once he started thinking about eliminating venues from the picture, the Anywhere Theatre Festival began to take shape.
How it works
Anywhere Theatre Festival provides an organisational framework for theatre companies, a marketing focus and a critical mass for potential audiences to come along.
The Festival is not curated but will be coordinated. This means you don’t need to pitch or apply for a spot – if you want to join you can. You pay to register, but the fee is tiny (in my opinion anyway!). If you’re doing a free event or a one-off performance then the cost of registration is $200. Register before 1 November and the most you’ll pay is $400 and that’s for companies presenting multiple shows at the Festival. (Prices go up slightly after 1 November.) Perhaps most importantly, you take the box office.
There’s a comprehensive producers’ pack you can download from the website, which should answer any questions you have.
I’m looking forward to seeing some really exciting site specific and street enhancing theatre all over Brisbane in May next year...
Find out more at www.anywherefest.com
I found heaps of inspiration for out of the ordinary spaces on an enroute tour a couple of months ago. You can read about it here.
