Couch Soup was a mini-
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...
of one page plays which started in 1997 and ran annually in
Hamilton, New Zealand
Hamilton ( mi, Kirikiriroa) is an inland city in the North Island of New Zealand. Located on the banks of the Waikato River, it is the seat and most populous city of the Waikato region. With a territorial population of , it is the country's fou ...
, and in 2007 in
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
as part of the New Zealand
Fringe Festival
Fringe theatre is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.Kemp, Robert, ''More that is Fre ...
. Plays were selected via an open call for scripts, and performed with minimal props, costumes and set (the
couch
A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield, is a cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people (although it is not uncommon for a single person to use a couch alone). It is commonly found in the form of a bench with uph ...
). The format followed in the festivals was around 30 one page plays, performed by four actors (two male, two female), with a run time of approximately an hour.
![Couch Soup-Ninjas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Couch_Soup-Ninjas.JPG)
Though the plays are limited to one side of an A4 page, no restrictions are placed on the
format
Format may refer to:
Printing and visual media
* Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements
* Paper formats, or paper size standards
* Newspaper format, the size of the paper page
Computing
* File format, particular way that informatio ...
used, and plays may vary from under thirty seconds to over two minutes in length, with the average being around a minute per play.
The festival is thus characterized by the demands it places on an actor as much as for its accessibility and vigo
Because it is difficult to tackle a serious theme completely in the course of a page the plays are commonly absurd, satirical or (rarely) dramas of the
wikt:kitchen sink, kitchen sink variety. Comedic and dramatic monologues as well as
homage
Homage (Old English) or Hommage (French) may refer to:
History
*Homage (feudal) /ˈhɒmɪdʒ/, the medieval oath of allegiance
*Commendation ceremony, medieval homage ceremony Arts
*Homage (arts) /oʊˈmɑʒ/, an allusion or imitation by one arti ...
s in the style of a particular writer are also common.
Playwrights
Over a hundred playwrights have participated since 1997, including:
*Mark Prebble - Creator o
makemarksmovie.com through which he sold the Executive Producer credits on his feature debu
Futile Attractionto successfully fund its post-production.
*
Albert Belz
Albert Alexander Amahou Belz (born 1973) is a New Zealand actor, writer and lecturer.
Belz was born in Whakatāne. He is Māori, of Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Pokai descent. He lived in Auckland from the age of 12, then in Hamilton and ...
- Acclaimed writer of ''Awhi Tapu'' and ''Te Maunga''
*Sarah Peters - Former assistant producer of
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...
Theatre Company's 2nd Unit, now working in the UK.
References
Annual events in New Zealand
Wellington City
Fringe festivals in New Zealand
Festivals in Wellington
Festivals in Hamilton, New Zealand
{{Fringe festivals in Australasia