Perth Theatre opens worldwide Five Minute Play event

Jun 17 2011 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

THE first of the unique 230 Five Minute Theatre broadcasts will be streamed live from Perth Theatre at 5pm on Tuesday.

Produced by National Theatre of Scotland, Five Minute Theatre is a 24-hour live online broadcast from 5pm on Tuesday until 5pm the following day.

Audiences can schedule their online viewing of the 10 theatre pieces from the Perth, Dundee and Fife areas, all of which have been allocated time slots.

Five Minute Theatre will feature more than 1000 performers in 11 countries. Of the 235 successful entries, 202 will be performed in Scotland.

Perth Theatre’s opening of the 24-hour online broadcast is The Gods are Watching by John McCann which is being performed as part of Perth Theatre Youth Festival. The one-woman monologue performed by Sally Reid and directed by Perth Theatre’s Barry Henderson will see the audience watch from the stage while the piece is performed in the auditorium.

And being streamed between 7am-8am on Wednesday is a monologue delivered from a park bench in Perth, when stand-up comic David Innes will present My Black Dog – recounting his personal experience of dealing with the highs and lows caused by depression.

The third and final Fair City five minute offerings is Four Stories High by Katie Mitchell streamed between 4pm and 5pm on Wednesday.

Katie, an advanced higher drama student at Perth High School, chose Anne Boleyn as the subject for her Five Minute Theatre play. It is set in the tower the day before Boleyn died.

Dundee Rep’s contribution is a one-off site-specific performance of Heartfelt by Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell. It’s directed by James Brining and features Rep Ensemble members Kevin Lennon and Emily Winter, and will be performed at 7.25pm on Tuesday at 4 Balmyle Road, Broughty Ferry.

The Five Minute Theatre event will be streamed live on www.fiveminutetheatre.com plus STV’s website: www.stv.tv on Tuesday. Individual entries will be hosted online by both www.stv.tv on a specially designed micro-site and www.fiveminutetheatre.com after the event.