Sitcom Trials April 4th - enter now! Deadline Feb 28th

Hello!

The Bristol team will be staging a Sitcom Trials show at the Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol, on Friday April 4th, and we're welcoming script submissions. At least THREE scripts from this competition will be performed by the team.

http://thewardrobetheatre.com/#/the-sitcom-trials/4578792935

THE BRIEF for submission to The Bristol Sitcom Trials.

The Sitcom Trials wants situation comedy scripts that a small group of actors can perform in a live environment with minimal stage in front of an audience, who will hopefully laugh. Ideally these sitcoms will be so marvelous that the TV & radio industry representatives in the audience (should there be any) will snap them up immediately.

THE FORMAT:

Your script must have a first 'half' of less than 8 minutes.
This first half should end in a cliffhanger, or something that leaves the audience wanting more.

It must then have a final scene of 2 or 3 minutes long. This will be performed only if your sitcom is the winner on the night

Scripts should come in at around 12 pages.

Your script must have NO MORE THAN 4 CHARACTERS. (We're flexible on this, but it's good to keep it focused on just a few characters)

The sitcoms we are to test out in our regular pub theatre shows with an eye to them being developed for TV must be PERFORMABLE LIVE (ie no filmed or location inserts)
&
ON ONE MINIMAL SET.

Think in terms of a radio script.

Please put your name, email address, and the title of your sitcom on the first page of your script, and send it as a PDF file.

UPLOAD SCRIPTS TO THE FILES:

Upload your entries to the appropriate folder in the files section of the egroup. You will need to join the free egroup to do so:

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SitsVac/files

The folder is named "Bristol April 2014"

And you can find a handy VOTE and REVIEW thing on the spangly Sitcom Trials website:

http://sitcomtrials.blogspot.co.uk/

Deadline for entries - midnight Friday 28th February, 2014
Deadline for voting - midnight Sunday 9th March, 2014

The read-through with the Bristol team will be on Saturday 15th March, after which we'll announce which scripts have made it through.

VOTING:

All members of the SitsVac egroup/British Comedy Guide Sitcom Trials thread, you included, will be invited to read, review, and vote on all scripts in contention. Vote YES, MAYBE or NO as to each one's potential and add a short one paragraph review. Your votes will not be counted unless you include a review.

Send reviews to the SitsVac TV group message board, or to the Sitcom Trials thread at the British Comedy Guide Forum.

SitsVac group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SitsVac/conversations/messages

British Comedy Guide Forum:
http://www.comedy.co.uk/forums/thread/29634/

Writers are welcome to vote on their own scripts.

Votes are then totalled thus; Yes = 2 points, Maybe = 1 point, No = minus -1 point. This way we draw up a shortlist for a script reading, from which we select the items to go into the stage show.

PERFORMANCE:

The top ten entries (as voted by you) will be read by the team, from which we'll select at least THREE scripts to be performed on Friday April 4th at the Wardrobe Theatre, St Michael's Hill, Bristol. The other two scripts will possibly come from the Bristol team (it might be that we pick five from this batch of entries, if we can't come up with anything as good as the top five scripts).

This will be a rehearsed-reading/script-in-hand/radio-style affair, though we're not averse to using the odd prop or two. These sitcoms will be in competition with each other, the winner to be decided an audience vote.

There is no set theme this time round (such as the Halloween/Eurovision/Sci-Fi Trials) - you're free to come up with absolutely anything you want.

PRIZE:

We're in the process of setting up the Radio Sitcom Trials, and we'll offer the writer of the winning sitcom the chance to have their script recorded as a full-cast audio play (with music and FX) and then hopefully broadcast on BBC local radio sometime this year.

Any questions?

Happy scribbling

Vince Stadon