The 2021 International Lockdown Theatre Competition
For many years now the students and teachers of Palestine have been at the forefront of innovation in performing theatre online. Last year was no exception of course, and despite the pandemic (perhaps because of it!) we saw a new sub-genre of Remote Theatre being developed, where students could perform in the same play from multiple locations. We came to call this new form Lockdown Theatre, and decided to run our annual competition along those lines. You can see the entries for the competition here:-
The overall winner of the 2020 Lockdown theatre competition - ‘My mother- in-law is a trouble maker’
We also had two very inspiring international performances. In ‘Teddy and his teacher’ we had students in Argentina and Gaza acting together and in ‘Live your life’ four locations! (Argentina, Gaza, Romania and Spain) It’s an extra challenge of course to do this: students and teachers had to deal with different time zones, different varieties of English, different approaches by the teachers, and even different expectations of what theatre is. But as with most challenges, this led to a lot of learning. Listen to Hanaa, one of the teachers involved in “Live your life’, talking about what the benefits to learning of doing intercultural collaborative remote theatre projects may be.
So, because of these benefits to learning and because our aim as a charity is to make connections around the world for young people in Palestine, for this year’s competition we’ve decided to make the international element of the competition a requirement. If you’d like to enter you’ll need to submit a recording of a Lockdown version of one of the plays from ‘Welcome to Earth’ and it will need to involve at least two students from Palestine, and at least two students from another location in the world. Don’t worry if you’re new to Lockdown Theatre, and/or don’t have international connections yet. There’s plenty of time until the submission deadline of 31st December and we’ll be offering lots of free training sessions where you’ll be able to make these connections over the next couple of months.
The Rules
This competition is open to young learners of English as a foreign language aged 11-15 (grades 6-9 in Palestine) anywhere in the world.
This is an international competition. Each play submitted must be performed by 2 or 3 young people who live in Palestine, acting together with 2 or 3 young people who live in one other country in the world. There must be a maximum of five actors with speaking parts in each play.
This isn't about writing a play. It's purely about putting together an interesting well-acted lockdown theatre performance. So we're asking participants to work with a play that has already been written. In fact the play must be taken from our second book, 'Welcome to Earth and other plays' which is available in digital or hard copies here. The play can be adapted and edited slightly, but the starting point must be one of the 30 scripts included in this book.
Each young person can only participate in one play. It must be a maximum of 8 minutes long.
We need to receive an email at info@handsupproject.org with a link to an unlisted Youtube recording of your lockdown performance by midnight Palestine time on Friday 31st December 2021. Any entries received after this time will not be accepted. The recording needs to be done through Zoom and must be an absolute maximum of 8 minutes unedited recording (you may remove the beginning and/or the end of the video in order to make it fit to 8 minutes) The virtual background or any other effect available through Zoom is allowed. In the email you'll need to include the name of the play from "Welcome to Earth", the names, country of residence, and ages of all the participants, and attach a completed data protection form signed by a parent or guardian for each participant. These forms are available for download either in English or in Arabic.
There will be an international panel of judges assessing the plays based on the criteria of creative expression, clarity of expression, and acting ability. The actors and both teachers from the overall winning play will be invited to a surprise location outside of Palestine where they’ll meet face to face, and have an opportunity to rework their play into a face to face performance.
Good luck to everybody, everywhere!
