FINDING work as a jobbing actor can be hard enough without a recession adding to your troubles, but a group of LIPA students think they may have found a way to tip the balance in their favour.
The five friends, who are all graduating this summer, have set up their own theatre company and have already booked themselves into the Unity for a two-day run of their play, Planning Permission.
They will also be taking four shows to this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Written by David Hutchinson, Planning Permission centres on a committee meeting of Yorkshire councillors discussing the opening of a DVD rental shop, but its author says it is more about the interplay between the characters than local government policy.
“It’s really a play about relationships and communication. It could be based on a conversation about anything, it just happens to be about a DVD rental shop,” explains the 20-year-old acting student.
“I wanted to set it in a situation that would seem trivial, but in fact is just a smaller version of things that are going on in the outside world.”
The characters, who include a student, an OAP, businessman, secondary school teacher, house husband and trainee nurse, are all played by other members of the Sell A Door theatre company, while David is directing.
The 60-minute farce explores traditional values about race, sexuality, age and gender.
The final-year student wrote the script as part of the application process for the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse’s Young Writers’ Programme.
The scheme introduces 16 to 25-year-olds to playwriting, who work closely with the theatres’ literary manager, and aims to encourage the “voices of the future”.
“There are so many great scripts out there that just don’t get produced,” he says.
“Planning Permission probably wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for us doing it ourselves, because it’s only an hour long, so it’s just not long enough to be commercial.”
Sell a Door, which is made up of actors, writers, directors, managers and technicians, is also working on four shows that the students will take to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.
David is no stranger to the festival, having performed another of his plays, The Secret Inside, about life in prison, there last year.
“It was amazing but also challenging,” recalls David, who is originally from Stirling, in Scotland.
“You have got to sell the show to people, so you’ve really got to love your material or you wouldn’t get bums on streets.”
This year’s productions include Falsettoland, a musical by William Finn which opened off Broadway in 1990, and a play by Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall.
The students will also perform two new works – By Order of Ignorance, which David co-wrote with Robert Gilbert, also in his third year at LIPA, and the musical Six Ways by final year musician Michael Bradley.
PLANNING Permission is at the Unity Theatre, Thursday, May 14, and Friday, May 15. Further details on Sell a Door from www. selladoor.com
