Photo by Sylvi Soe
This year, the world’s biggest little festival, celebrated their Sydney Gala Finals at the Seymour Centre to conclude the 2014 festival. During this year’s Short and Sweet Festival, over 162 plays were performed out of around 1000 nominated internationally. To date, the festival has catered for more than 3000 original new theatre works globally, since it began in 2002.
The top twelve at the Sydney Gala Finals were as follows-
1) Guided By Voices- This piece was creative and original. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this piece as it opened the set with humour, good nature and a quirky insight into the little voice commentary we often have while we humans make decisions. Excellent timing and excellent acting.
2) Nana- During this play, the audience roared with laughter at the sexually explicit humour presented by a little old lady. The synopsis states that the play “explores some of society’s most taboo topics: love, loss and sexuality among the aging.”
3) The Blue Balloon- I really enjoyed this play. For me it was touching, metaphorical and it showed excellent use of props and lighting. The use of space was very creative and the idea was very innovative, with undertones of human loss, even depression. Very poignant.
4) Stalemate- This was a wonderful play; innovative, original and terribly amusing, with relevant pop culture references. It magnified the frivolous in a fresh new way, as the protagonist had chosen to bake a cheesecake with a biscuit base, but the biscuit backfired with a lengthy lawsuit demanding his rights. There were puns galore.
5) Some Other Toy- This play engaged with an original futuristic concept, while the audience were in stitches over the dilemmas that arise when the use of a sex toy goes horribly wrong. Great use of lighting and well-acted by the two women who held the scene.
6) Wild Flowers- This play finished the first act with a bang and led us into the interval with a food fight. The fight arose from high-pressure tension between three ladies at a tea party and their social etiquette, rules and psychological bullying. An exaggerated flare up that left the audience in high morale by the night’s half-way point.
