Channel 4 Play Premieres at Ambassadors, 22 JunDate: 28 April 2006
The winning play of Channel 4’s upcoming reality TV programme, The Play’s the Thing, will receive its world premiere at the West End’s New Ambassadors Theatre on 22 June 2006 (previews from 12 June). Tickets go on sale today (Friday 28 April 2006) – although neither the author nor any details of the play, including the title, can be released before they are revealed on the four-part TV series, airing from 12 June.
In association with West End producer Sonia Friedman, Channel 4 announced the competition a year ago and invited previously unproduced playwrights to send in proposed play synopses, along with sample scenes and character lists (See News, 11 May 2006). Over 2,000 aspiring playwrights – with day jobs ranging from restaurateurs to supermarket workers, scientists to call centre operatives - the top 50 were chosen by a group of professional play readers.
Friedman narrowed this list down to 30 plays, whose authors met with the expert panel consisting of Friedman, playwrights’ agent Mel Kenyon and actor Neil Pearson. The final ten selected by the panel attended a playwriting masterclass with dramatist Stephen Jeffreys before having to write the first full drafts of their plays. After workshops, there were just three plays left, from which the winner was decided.
The TV series follows this process and goes behind the scenes to show how difficult it is to produce a play – let alone a new play by an unknown writer – in the commercial West End. The fourth and final episode will also include coverage from opening night at the New Ambassadors, where preview audiences will be asked, à la The Mousetrap, to keep the play’s identity secret until after the embargo set by Channel 4’s TV schedule.
The idea for The Play’s the Thing was inspired by the state of the West End, where musicals and revivals are rife but new plays fare less well unless they have transferred from elsewhere, often the subsidised sector. In 2004, there was a spate of swift play closures - the sole West End-originated new play, Friedman’s own production of Michael Hastings’ Calico, closed within a month despite the high-calibre team of director Edward Hall and actress Imelda Staunton and some positive reviews (See News, 22 Mar 2004).
Commenting on The Play’s the Thing at the time of the project’s launch last year, Friedman said: "Theatre critics constantly bemoan the fact that there are not enough new plays in the West End. I agree. Coming from a subsidised, new-writing background but now working exclusively in the commercial sector, I find it frustrating that so few new plays premiere in the West End. The reason why is obvious: the financial risks are too high and the pressure to succeed is too intense. Therefore I am excited by the prospect of hunting for that elusive new play from that first-time playwright, and then producing it to the highest standards and seeing if it is possible for the play to go on to enjoy critical and financial success."
The Play’s The Thing was commissioned by Jan Younghusband, the head of Channel 4 Arts and the woman behind previous arts-related TV competitions Operatunity and Musicality.
- by Terri Paddock
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