NEON Extra
June 2013
Regarded as one of Melbourne Theatre Company’s most significant initiatives so far, the NEON independent theatre festival has been celebrating a big diversity of talent since the inaugural event’s launch last May. Featuring five of Melbourne’s top independent companies staging their works with complete curatorial freedom, NEON 2013 has been running alongside its offshoot NEON Extra – a program of free in-depth forums, workshops, networking and mentoring opportunities for independent theatre-makers.
Melbourne Theatre Company’s Artistic Director, Brett Sheehy, says NEON Extra activities have brought together industry commentators, journalists and leading creatives to contribute by sharing their views on various themes with the public.
“Southbank Theatre has become a 10-week focus of discourse and discussion. NEON Extra has been built around NEON, which contains five independent theatre companies. The programming of it has really been a collaboration with myself and Martina Murray [NEON Festival producer], but Martina is also managing the NEON Extra program, designed for theatre-makers and for the general public who are interested in getting involved and partaking in more in-depth conversations about theatre.”
Murray explains that NEON Extra itself has been split into mini-sections, all of which contain free activities including NEON Connect, Insights for Independents, Writers’ Workshops, and Directing Masterclass. Furthermore, Insights for Independents in itself contains free boutique information sessions aimed at independent theatre-makers and producers.
“Everything has been free – not just the theatre-maker workshops, but the forums and the stuff for the general public, which is great. There has been a lot of information sharing about access points for independent artists all over the city, not just in relation to Melbourne Theatre Company, so it’s been an amazing opportunity for like-minded people to meet each other and collaborate and share their concerns and resources and network. Of course, we are also talking about how MTC works as well, though. There seems to be an assumption among the independent theatre community that the majors know everything about how things are done – and that’s also the case vice-versa – which is just not true. So there has been a lot of confusion and frustration which wasn’t being shared for a long time, and we are working on breaking that now. The overall experience has been inspirational to me and MTC. Absolutely everyone benefits from an event like this.”
Murray claims the entire festival – including NEON Extra – has been an inspirational experience so far, and that the people of Melbourne seem very much to agree.
“It’s been such a pleasure to see our known MTC audiences mixing with new ones who have said they’ve never been here before, and that’s really exciting. To see the conversations between the two has been inspiring and the feedback from the people who have attended has been overwhelming.”
NEON Festival runs until July 21 at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler.
mtc.com.au
Images:
1. The Rabble – Guy Little
2. The Hayloft Project – Patrick Boland
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