The Hour

The National Theatre of Scotland celebrated their fifth birthday today with the launch of their ambitious Five Minute Theatre Event. Over a thousand performers have taken part in the production, which will see 235 theatre pieces, each just five minutes long, streamed back to back online at http://programmes.stv.tv/five-minute-theatre/.

The National Theatre of Scotland is a huge source of national pride and has put Scottish theatre on the map with fantastic productions such as the critically acclaimed ‘Black Watch’. 202 of the plays being streamed tonight have been performed in Scotland.

The project was devised both to celebrate the National Theatre of Scotland and to find out how different people interpret theatre all around the world. Those taking part include everyone from poets and film makers to primary school pupils and expectant mothers.

The broadcast started tonight (June 21) at 5pm and manager of the project Marianne Maxwell from the National Theatre of Scotland told The Hour:

“We wanted to create an event that could involve as many people as possible so we had an open submission process in February just for a month and we had 350 people sign up to take part.

“The project has really caught the imagination of a lot of people. We’ve had a lot of people from Scotland and people from as far and wide as China, Paraguay, Australia, America and Europe.”

Some of the performances will be live and open to an audience at no charge. These performances are taking place at The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, Adam House in Edinburgh and the CCA in Glasgow.

The Hour was also joined by 14-year-old Heather Gordon, who wrote and stars in The Box of Chocolates, about a girl who gets rejected on Valentine’s Day and finds a box of chocolates in her bedroom. She said:

“She doesn’t know who [the chocolates] are from but she starts to eat them, and with each chocolate that she eats a new memory conjures up images of her and her family. In the end she realises that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t get a Valentine’s Day card because she’s got this amazing family and everybody loves her.”

For more information on the project see the Five Minute Theatre website.

Watch the live stream on STV now.