by Hannah McKie

The British Drama League’s One-Act Play Competition Regional Final is both a period LARP and a theatre training workshop. Participants will have the chance to recite monologues or pre-learned scenes with their peers. Those who’d rather wait in the wings can play characters who wouldn’t be on stage but who still play a crucial role in the overall event. Whether backstage or onstage, every player will have the chance to try new techniques as part of the purpose of this event is for players to be professional taught some of the skills of stage craft and acting.

Regional Final is also a costumed period drama. The session explores a boom time in NZ theatre– the heyday of the one-act play festivals of the 1930s and 40s. Dedicated and determined teams from different parts of the country – playwrights, actors, directors, carpenters – rehearse new NZ work in a race against time, budget, sexism, philistinism, the Second World War, inter- and intra-team rivalry, romance and a general lack of conviction that anything happens in a NZ woman’s life worth writing about – before coming head to head in the The BDL One-Act Play Competition Regional Final.

This LARP/theatre workshop is based on several years of Hannah’s extensive PhD research into the New Zealand theatre scene of 1920 to 1950 and some of the playtexts used during this period.