This week International Women’s Day is fully recognised in the plays presented on stage during Short and Sweet Week Five of “The biggest little theatre festival in the world”. Special guests visiting this week are the winners from Short+Sweet Hollywood, hailing from Los Angeles, with their amazing ten minute play MATILDE AND LULA.
Every week there is a new Short+Sweet Top 80 program (Thursdays-Fridays-Saturdays at 7.30pm and Sundays at 6.00pm) together with a separate new S+S Wildcards program each week (Saturdays at 3.30pm and Sundays at 2.30pm). The annual Short+Sweet huge gala finals, all take place during April 2019.
Second year in this big new venue for S+S, and comfortably seating a maximum of 171. Top 80 WEEK FIVE is a huge “International Women’s Day” special event, Thursday 7th March 2019 until Sunday. The S+S festival has new shows every week for eight weeks, and runs through to April 2019.
(1) Linger
Her life and times from 1990 to 2014, off-stage and on-stage. Interesting and clever and delicious monologue delivered by the very dead Irish lead singer from The Cranberries, Delores O’Riordan.
Written by Liz Schneidewin
Directed by Susan Lewington
(2) This is What a Feminist Looks Like
Three women, elegantly delivering their lucky escapes within their intimate feminist stories from three eras. including UK Suffragettes, USA Women’s Liberation second world war, and world-wide Modern Women’s Movements, and present-day internet trolls plus child abuse.
ITC: ACT IV
Written and directed by Melinda Ryan
(3) Reality Check
Reality television show, very strange comedy on a shoe-string television budget, so what is fake and what is actually real? Fully illustrating the Pittwater lifestyles of the not-rich and not-famous living well on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
ITC: The Pretenders Theatre Company
Written and directed by Maria Karambelas
(4) Silent Accomplice
Ignoring Open-Door neighbours who are living out their violent lives in their fish bowl. Brilliantly executed drama at its finest, Friday Evenings every loud violent argument heard by all, then a Police Incident, and the witness who ignored the sounds of their neighbour Christina being violently murdered by her violent abusive husband, and yet still did nothing.
Written by Suzy Wilds
Directed by Joy Roberts
(5) Matilde and Lula
Interesting exploration of the issues of contemporary city life, becomes deeply tragic as the lines are deliciously blurred. Inexplicable absurdist fantasy fiction with twists and turns. In The Bronx, New York, these two wonderful homeless women delivered the weirdest kind of feminist absurdist personal comedy intrigue, both fully rugged-up with the temperature deliberately set at forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, i.e a very cold five degrees Celsius.
Written by Tessie Herrasti
Directed by Tessie Herrasti
Starring Tessie Herrasti and Andi Yuma
(6) #metoo
Audience favourite, very memorable drama. Bearing witness, three women discus “metoo abuse” and all are no longer “pretending did not happen”, and male child abuse also becomes the issue at the end. Trust me, there just are some things that you just can not un-see.
Written by Elizabeth Crawshaw
Directed by Taufeeq Shiekh
(7) Margots Bench
One woman monologue, the very long departed Margot confesses to her crimes in the afterlife, every event that changed her very long adulterous life, despite those murderous crimes committed.
Written by Lindsey Brown
Directed by Olga Tamara
(8) Modern Renaissance
Excellent drama with inspired comedy and very twisted ending. Modern day clashes in a house shared by William Shakespeare, Frida Kahlo de Rivera, Ludwig Van Beethoven and the actor playing the lead role of Othello.
ITC: Little Creative House
Written and directed by Laura Bailey
(9) WhiteWash
Huge ensemble cast with multiple roles, with fully choreographed dance and movement. Bogans relationships everywhere, in this bogan family comedy of bogan sisters. Sectioned and preaching with angry drama galore.
ITC: Bohemia Theatre
Written and directed by Jodie Wolf
Short+Sweet Theatre (@ Tom Mann Theatre) Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA) 136 Chalmers Street, Surry Hills
SHORT + SWEET THEATRE – Top 80 – WEEK FIVE – 7th March 2019 until 10th March 2019
7:30pm Thursdays-Fridays-Saturdays
6:00pm Sundays (followed by the official presentation)
TICKETS: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/shortsweetsydney
WEBSITE: https://shortandsweet.org/festivals/shortsweet-theatre-sydney-2019
https://www.facebook.com/pg/shortsweetsydney/
https://shortandsweetsydney.wordpress.com/
