"Billy Balfoor" @ Short+Sweet Sydney, mate!

Left to right: Steve Warwick (Laird), director Grant Wilcox and Chris Turner (Billy).

My short play, "Billy Balfoor Wants An Apology", had its world premiere at Short+Sweet Sydney / The Biggest Little Play Festival in the World. Grant and I communicated via email (and me 16 hours behind him) for much of the casting and rehearsal process leading up to our week of production, February 16-20.

All I've wanted for three years was to get a play to the production phase of this festival. There's a series of ropes to jump through before you get there - like the 750 submissions received. Once those are read and pared down, 12 plays get a one-week run over the course of 8 weeks = 96 plays total in the festival. The judges top play from each week goes to the Gala Finals which is two nights in March. That's where they award the prize money for Best Play, Audience Favorite, Best Actor and so forth.

"Billy" was not selected to the finals. Fuckin' Aussies. Ha - I'm kidding. I had no expectations going into this. However, there's a bit of a silver lining. See, there's also a People's Choice selection which - at the end of the 8 weeks - determines the People's Choice play to advance to the finals. Long story short, "Billy" placed 5th out of the 11 plays my week (one play was dropped). Interestingly, the People's Choice vote selected "Billy" over the play the judges selected for the Gala Finals (that short placed 6th in the People's Choice).

So - the audience overall liked my play over the judges’ vote for best play (and 4 others…but who cares about those plays). Very cool. Grant had some nice things to say as he saw the play unfold in front of an audience:

"…I'm very happy with how the week went."

"…we all really enjoyed working on "BILLY" . It was different and it had impact."

"…it received one of the biggest ovations of the night. A guy sitting behind me…said 'that was fucking brilliant'."

"…you could hear a pin drop…the tension is palpable."

Everything Grant said is what I wanted to achieve with this play, so I’m very happy. If you wanna check out some previous Short+Sweet posts on "Billy", there's one of the show poster Grant made up and a blog post on the actors.

More pics from the production to follow once I order them from Sydney - and a DVD of the production. It was a wonderful experience - only wish I could've attended. Next time. I'll always submit to Short+Sweet. Great festival. Great people. Thank you Grant, Steve and Chris - for becoming involved with this play. And thank you, Alex Broun (playwright and coordinator who heads up Short+Sweet Sydney...and Malaysia, Singapore, Melbourne, Canberra, Auckland, New Castle, Delhi, New Castle, Rockhampton, Brisbane and Adelaide)!

And thank you "Billy" and "Laird" - you crazy motherfuckers. Next time.