Last October, Newcastle’s Alphabetti Theatre commissioned three short plays under the title The Rooms, three short one-woman plays inspired by and performed in some of the hidden spaces in the venue which is itself the basement of the old Odeon Cinema.
Now the venue is to present another instalment, The Rooms 2016, this time new short plays for Halloween written by three of the North East’s most exciting female writers performed by men.
In A Terrorist’s Guide to Romance by Laura Lindow, Citizen X—a righteous man—sits alone down in the foundations. He has plans for this city, plans that will blow your mind. He sees a future. If only the rest of the world would comply. And when he gets this itch out of his head, he’ll show you. Well, those that listen.
The itch isn’t particularly special. Today he would have trouble picking her out of a crowd. He’s always been bad with faces. Some kind of amnesia. But that thing behind her eyes, he’d know that if he saw it again. He needs to see that again. That thing he calls ‘good’.
In Sarah Gonnet’s Word Salad, Mathew misses Catherine, the Catherine who always hated his Korean horror films; the Catherine who was creative, and special; the Catherine we would have liked to meet.
Maybe he lost her when he was busy making all those film trailers. Maybe he lost her to the Bipolar, the treatment programmes, the Adderrall. Maybe he lost her when the doctors were trying to make everyone normal, the same, generic, like an American procedural cop show. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe, now he’s turned this toilet into a laboratory, he can find her again.
Finally there’s Backstreet Salesman by Becci Sharrock.
Come in, gather round. Z wants to have a look at you. He has a clean room! For his favourite. What’s that you’re drinking? Are you a big drinker?
Z isn’t from round here. Not originally. He came here when… Well, it doesn’t matter because Z’s got a proposition for you. You could say Z is an entrepreneur. Ever since that night with Geordie and Sammy. Waking up to the smell of blood. But Z doesn’t discuss business in public.
And neither will you, right? Because Z has seen you in the town, doing your shopping, out with your mates. Z has eyes everywhere.
The Rooms 2016, like its predecessor, is a promenade performance, with the audience moving to a different rooms for each play, and will run from 27 October to 5 November.