Theatre lecturer Dr Rand Hazou and MUTS president Hannah Rowland.
Calling all Albany student playwrights
Do you have an idea for an edgy, entertaining, poignant or provocative piece of theatre?
Aspiring Albany student playwrights are being urged to get their creative juices flowing and enter an inaugural playwriting competition, with the winning work to be staged next year.
Named the Bitsas, the competition involves “Bits-A-Writing, Bits-A-Performing”, and is the initiative of the Massey University Theatre Society (MUTS), launched this year.
MUTS president Hannah Rowland says the competition is a chance for students – particularly those studying English, Creative Writing, Media Studies and Theatre – to experiment with and develop their own material.
Students from any discipline can enter as long as they are MUTS members (membership is free). Plays must be a maximum of 20 minutes (about 20 single-sided A4 pages), new material not performed elsewhere, and have a New Zealand connection or element. The winning entry, judged anonymously by a panel of two staff members and one student, will be announced at the end of October. Actors from MUTS will perform it at next year’s Orientation Week in March.
Hannah, a second year student studying English and Social Anthropology, applied to the Albany Students Association (ASA) for funding to sponsor the prizes (first prize – $200; second prize – $100 and third prize – $50), along with budget for rehearsals, lighting, costumes and marketing of the winning performance.
Dr Rand Hazou, who lectures in theatre as part of the Expressive Arts programme, says playwriting competitions have been instrumental in encouraging and developing a distinctive New Zealand theatre.
“I’d like to see the Bitsa entries engage with New Zealand in some way,” he says.
MUTS has 50 members since it began earlier this year to coincide with the opening of Theatre Lab – a new theatre space created inside the Sir Neil Waters building. MUTS members participated in a publicly performed play reading of The Invisible Foot, a 40-minute piece written by US business academic and playwright Associate Professor Steven Taylor, who spent a month at the Albany campus with the Fulbright Specialist Programme.
The Bitsas are a promising beginning for student theatre at Albany, says Hannah. Plans for next year include mime performances in the library and choreographed flash mobs around the campus, as well as regular workshops on a range of theatre and stagecraft topics such as body language and facial expressions, technical skills for lighting, sound, digital technology and more.
Email Bitsa entries to: masseyunimuts@gmail.com by October 1.