Couch Soup
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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 ...
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 ...
, 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 metr ...
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). 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. Though the plays are limited to one side of an A4 page, no restrictions are placed on the format 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 homages 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 Attraction
to successfully fund its post-production. * Albert Belz - 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 most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...
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