From August 3-27, the Illawarra is set to host Short+Sweet, an exhilarating array of short-form storytelling that aims to make the world a more creative place, 10 minutes at a time. 

Taking centre stage at the Phoenix Theatre in Coniston, the festival will include 20 plays featuring local and Sydney-based casts and crews.

Audiences and a panel of industry judges will pick the best plays, which will then advance to the Illawarra Gala Final Showcase on August 26 and 27.

We asked festival director Luke Berman how Short+Sweet came to the Illawarra and what audiences can expect to see this year.

How did Short+Sweet begin and what inspired you to start it in the Illawarra?

Short+Sweet started 21 years ago in Sydney and I’d been involved with it for the last 15 years. Given we have so many skilled and experienced actors, writers and directors in the Illawarra, I secured the performance rights for Short+Sweet in the Illawarra back in 2017. Since then we have been part of the Illawarra artistic infrastructure in theatre, film and cabaret. 

This year we have 20 theatre plays, eight cabaret acts and we are showcasing 50 films. We’re even showing a bonus 20 films from our Filipino Film Festival Finals, which we’ll be running once the Illawarra festival concludes. A little taste of home for our Pinoy locals. 

What is the process of creating the plays, from writing through to performing?

We have two ways a theatre play can make the stage. We look for relationships with existing theatre companies who might want to submit their own 10-minute piece with their own creative team – or we source our scripts locally, and from around the world. From there, we bring in local theatre directors to take on a script and rehearse their own play before bringing it to perform with us at Short+Sweet.

We get over a thousand scripts submitted each year, and many of those do make our Illawarra script pool, but as a regional festival we do very much try to encourage local works wherever possible. But ultimately, Short+Sweet is a melting pot of creativity, a network of artists coming together to collaborate, network and to share together a mutual love of performance.

What themes or types of plays can audiences expect to see this year?

With almost 20 short plays over our two weeks of theatre, there’s a wide variety of stories. There’s plays to laugh along with, there are plays that’ll get you thinking and there are plays that will make you look inside your heart. 

We have plays where a theatre robbery goes horribly wrong, about social media influencer addiction, we have plays where health inspections are complicated because of a dead body in the freezer, we even have a crotchety old hotel concierge who creates “euphemistic hell”. We even will have death ‘pop in’ for a little chat. 

There are also stories about how our history has a way of finding us again, what it means to love again in a world where people just seem to want to go through the motions, and a powerful piece of melding poetry exploring issues of displacement by a second-generation Asian-Australian.

Have there been any exciting achievements or successes for theatre-makers in the Illawarra from Short+Sweet?

We’ve had many Short+Sweet actors, writers and directors go on to win awards and recognition in other festivals worldwide. One who we are most proud of is Katrina Samaras, who has had a script staged in every Short+Sweet Illawarra festival produced so far. 

Katrina made her writing debut with us back in 2018 and her play won best play that week. She’s become a prolific playwright, and her work is showing how accessible and relatable it is not just to people in our own region, but in broader Australia and beyond.

We also have the very talented German director Fiona Leonard joining us this year who will be working remotely with her cast currently touring in Sydney. We are delighted to have our first international touring show with us.

It’s funny, I started the Illawarra festival partially to bring more Wollongong plays to Sydney. We’re now seeing more Sydney and touring plays wanting to come down to us. We’re pretty proud of that, people are enjoying what we’re doing.

We also have a filmmaker travelling from the Philippines because his film got selected in our Illawarra Film Festival, Cebuano director Eli Razo whose stunning film, A Beautiful Catch, was one of the highest scoring films submitted this year.

How can people get tickets to see the shows?

We have so much to offer our Illawarra audience, whether you like theatre, film, music – we have you covered. Just head over to shortandsweet.org/Illawarra or follow us on our Facebook page. Tickets can be purchased online or tickets at the door.