Description

Competition Rules   (DOWNLOAD HERE)

1. The Gap Arts Festival 2021 invites submissions for its Short-Short Showcase.
2. These should be short, stand-alone, theatre pieces, maximum one thousand words, – not a scene or scenes from a longer work.
3. A selection of scripts will be rehearsed by a team of professional actors/directors, and given public readings at the Gap Arts Festival, August 6 – 8th 2021
4. This project is open to anyone over 16 years of age residing in Ireland.
5. Entries, which must be original work, have a strict maximum of one thousand words – including stage directions. Any works exceeding this limit will not be considered.
6. There is a maximum of two characters in each script, – any gender or age.
7. The deadline for entries is noon July 16th July 23rd, 2021. No entries will be considered after this time.
8. We are only able to accept entries submitted online.
9. Please do not submit any supporting materials including CDs, photographs, reviews or any audio-visual material.
10. Scripts must be submitted by the writer and not by an agent or any other third party.
11. The entrant must exclusively own and control all copyright and all other related rights to the submitted script.
12. The submitted script must be available for presentation at the Gap Arts Festival August 6-8, 2021.
13. By submitting your script you give the Gap Arts Festival permission to record the readings for use on its website and for the promotion of the event.
14. All scripts must be double-spaced, and sent as PDFs to gapartsfestshortshortshowcase@gmail.com
15. No correspondence will be entered into, except notification of winners.
16. There is a €10 fee per entry, to cover administration.

* On June 29th The Deadline was extended to July 23rd

 

THE GAP ARTS FESTIVAL SHORT-SHORT SHOWCASE 2021

Some Thoughts from Festival Director, Garrett Keogh

Start with Passion. Something, anything you feel strongly about. Waiting with the phone to your ear while an endless recording says ‘We’ll be with you shortly…’ The state of the world. The constraints of the Lockdown, the handling of the pandemic. The joys of love, of swimming in the sea. The pains, the blames, the unexpected discoveries…

Characters. Who are they, where have they come from, what have they done, what do they want to, what do they need to do – and how are they going about doing that…? How do your character/s deal with something that changes? With problems? How they react to, and how they affect one another? What about external circumstances? What is happening to them right now as we watch? Are they waiting on one number in the Lotto, or on the Gardaí to knock on the door? Or, unexpectedly, both…?

In any script, but particularly in something as short as this, grab our attention. And do it quickly. Hold it, twist it, surprise it. Make us laugh, intrigue us, make us feel. One way is to have characters we recognise confronting the twists and surprises that life throws up. And have them do that in one thousand words.

Be open. Be prepared to astonish yourself, to be astonished by how the characters and situations develop, and see where the writing takes you.
Scripts are not just dialogue – or in this case, duologues. There can be monologue; and duologue; as well as mixes of both. Characters can talk directly to the audience. Or to themselves. There can be exits, entrances; there can be silence, action, mime…

This format does not allow offstage characters, but during the public readings stage directions can be read to indicate off-stage sound effects. For example, the happy sounds of a party offstage, while someone sits alone outside… And a simple line of stage direction can tell us if your script is set on Mars, in ER, on a beach in Portugal; in the distant past, or in a thousand light years from now.

 

Some references
https://www.fishamble.com/brighterfuture.html
https://www.rte.ie/documents/drama-on-one/2020/08/pj-o-connor-2020-v1.01.pdf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/resources