Dear HUMAN SCRIPT-WRITERS,

This year, the Crack Theatre Festival will feature an event entitled SHORT AND SHIT, a short play competition (which has nothing to do with and was not inspired by any other short play competitions, not that I even know what you’re talking about because I’ve never heard of any others) which aims to find The Worst Playscript in Australia. We’re looking for playwrights to dig out the most turgid and gutwrenching unfinished fragments from their bottom drawers and submit them.

Directed by Laura Scrivano, our ace performance ensemble will attempt to breathe life into your ghastly mistakes and the most pompous, derivative, angst-ridden drivel will win A PRIZE!*

Does Paul Atreides write better scripts than you even after he is dead?
Image from Cryo Studios’ Dune.

This is your chance to finally see a production of that self-important high-handed historical romance you wrote when you were 17, or to discover whether that insulting screed about your ex-partner is as brilliant as it seemed after 675ml of Kirov vodka.

If you’re up for it, mail cracktheatrefestival at gmail dot com with:
- A short extract (max 5 pages) of the script;
- A 1 paragraph explanation of how this masterpiece came to be.

Entries close Tuesday 21 September.

Is your play about a hanged werewolf? Maybe it should have been.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

SHORT AND SHIT takes place as part of the Crack Theatre Festival:
2.00-3.00pm Friday 1 October
Lodge of Instruction: Crackhouse, 102 King Street, Newcastle NSW

* freedom from the shame and guilt which has haunted you all these years and a certificate

Shh’s Blind, As You See It, featuring as part of Crack 2010

The title of this post is the whole story. It’s true, it’s real, the program for this year’s Crack Theatre Festival has been published, on this very website.

Since emerging in 2009, Crack has taken its place as the sullen teenage goth in the This Is Not Art family, cheating on its Maths assignment while drinking cask wine in an underpass. In 2010, join us for a very special coming of age celebration at the Crackhouse on King Street from 30 September – 3 October as we unleash a blistering program of performances, gigs, panels, forums, workshops and interventions by an array of Australia’s most creative and accomplished theatre artists, including Sisters Grimm, The Last Tuesday Society, Shh, and The Masters of Space and Time.

Check out the full schedule of events on the Program page, or have a butcher’s at this year’s lineup on the Artists page. Do it all, do it right now!

The Masters of Space and Time’s Up to your Arse in Alligators, featuring as part of Crack 2010

Exciting times! The program for this year’s Crack has been finalised, confirmed, and we are safe and snug in our VERY OWN BRAND NEW VENUE, about which we will tell you more soon. Along with all the other This Is Not Art festivals, Crack is preparing to launch its program on this website on the glorious date of AUGUST 9!

In the meantime, Crack is the subject of discussion on the internet this month (and not in relation to any criminal or civil court cases!). National magazine for youth performing arts Lowdown this month features an article on the Crack Theatre Festival, written by none other than outgoing co-director David Finig. And as you’d expect from Finig, it falls somewhere between serious reportage and Livejournal confessional.

From the darkness of the truck’s interior, a pale ghostly shape lurched forward into the light. In the harsh glare of the floodlights, the shape resolved itself into a tall figure dressed in a loincloth and smeared white paint, a constellation of glowing LEDs bound to his skull with sticky-tape. Lifting a megaphone to its mouth, the figure barked: ‘I’M SUSAN SARANDON! I WAS IN THELMA AND LOUISE!’ As a DJ concealed in the back of the truck began to play, the megaphone-wielding creature loomed over the crowd shrieking that he was married to Tim Robbins and asking the crowd, “What famous movies have you been in?”

Check it out at Lowdown Online, or simply sit closer to the fire and blow on your hands, waiting in tense anticipation for the truth to be revealed: what will happen at Crack this year?