Fringe Fever at 24:7 Theatre Festival

Nine years ago, during the summer months that usually see theatres go quiet, a daring new event began to take shape in the pubs and clubs of Manchester. Jump forward to today, and the 24:7 theatre festival is no longer such a newcomer – though the work it’s showcasing is as new and fresh as it’s ever been.

“I thought, there needs to be somewhere for new actors to be seen in Manchester,” says executive producer David Slack, who has overseen the founding and development of the festival completely from scratch, using sheer determination and (voluntary) hard work. “So I wrote a plan. It was to be a showcase for actors and we would do it in non-theatre spaces, in the summer while theatres were closed.” The next step up from showcasing new actors seemed to be to showcase new writers – and the week-long 24:7 festival now prides itself on giving playwrights a platform upon which to develop and produce their scripts, then see them performed in front of an audience. In turn, that audience is provided with live shows that have never been seen anywhere else. This year’s line-up is no different, with 11 world premieres carefully chosen from the pile of submitted scripts.

“We started it off in July 2004, with no funding and a lot of good will on the participants’ part, and it worked,” Slack continues. “I think that we were filling in the cracks. Between the people putting on occasional shows and the established theatres there was a crevasse – more than a crack, really. This gave people the opportunity for new theatre-making, and the chance for everyone who wanted to get into theatre-making to gain some experience.” Over the years, 24:7 has produced and staged a total of 157 plays, giving the opportunity to hundreds of creatives and theatre-makers of all kinds – writers, actors, directors, producers, technicians, you name it – to make their debuts.

This year is particularly special, as the festival will be celebrating its tenth edition. A lot has changed over the near decade since 24:7 came to be, but as Slack says, “in essence it’s the same. We’re just able to help more now because we have the experience and connections.” 24:7 is a festival about people working together to create something unique, and it’s that sense of collaboration and learning that makes it stand out as a theatre event. “Because everyone wants to be there it has a chance,” he says, “and there’s a festival atmosphere every year that just happens. People meet people, and that’s what it’s all about. People have met, got together and got married because of 24:7 productions.”

As the festival grows and evolves, so do its performances. One exciting change this year is the festival’s introduction of its first site-specific piece. Manchester’s Burning, written and produced by independent theatre company Milk & Two Sugars, will be hosted in the Manchester Central Fire Station in Ancoats – and yes, there will be actual fire (and 'loud noise'). The festival team are especially excited about this performance as they believe it showcases what 24:7 – and other events like it – can achieve; how, without being limited by space, they can do things that couldn't be achievable in a conventional theatre.

Putting on a theatre show in a working fire station is a huge step forward for the company, but also a huge challenge. Rebekah Harrison, who co-directs the play with colleague Kurt Nikko, describes Manchester’s Burning as “telling the lives of the firefighters and how they themselves deal with the aftermath of such major disasters, how each individual firefighter copes in their own way. We didn’t want to do something that was like a documentary, but we still needed to make it real, since we had the real fire station as a space. We want it to have a human edge.” Harrison describes being involved in 24:7 as “a big confidence boost, and it just opens so many doors. You can be putting on stuff all the time in Manchester and feel like you’re not really getting noticed, so being asked to be part of 24:7 is a real affirmation. We’re just so excited.”

Also a first for the festival is The Young, 24:7’s first ever devised performance. Created by Faro productions, this show aims to explore and challenge our society’s dysfunctional and perhaps even dangerous perceptions of youth, beauty and ageing. Set in a dystopian future of eternal youth, the play, according to writer Abi Hynes, “is urgent and angry about the things to do with getting older in society that we’re not doing right.”

Elsewhere, there's Temper, the debut play from writer Richard O’Neill, which tells the story of Calum, a young and apathetic man who has been living by shifting blame and hiding from reality, and Debs, the woman who forces him to confront his cowardice and find his way in life – if she can.

The performances are spread across some of Manchester’s best fringe venues. The versatile Northern Quarter creative space 2022NQ will be hosting both The Young and Louise Monaghan’s My Space – the story of a “mad old man” and four teens on community service. Also in the Northern Quarter, the unique, purpose-built boutique Three Minute Theatre will be hosting Temper, Laura Kate Barrow’s quirky love story Bump and Brian Marchbank’s ‘zany comedy’ about the trials and tribulations of painting a wall, No Soft Option.

Last but not at all least, New Century House will stage five productions, including the festival’s only children’s show, Billy, the Monster and ME! by Catherine Manford and Sarah Molyneux. The venue is also hosting two historical dramas: Michael Jacob’s 19th-century detective tale Daylight Robbery and Thomas Bloor’s Night on the Field of Waterloo, the story of two war widows struggling to survive in the dark and surreal world that was the aftermath of the titular battle. Also looking at the aftermath of tragedy is Alice Brockway’s Blunted, which follows four characters as they try to come to terms with the fallout of a ‘brutal, pointless murder’. Finally, Away From Home, by Rob Ward and Martin Jameson, tells the story of the relationship between a male escort and a premiership footballer in a sharp, edgy and moving one-man performance.

As well as its 11 full length plays, the festival will put on a handful of script readings and ‘extras’, which will include stand-up comedy and a collaboration – hosted in the Portico Library – with scriptwriters in Canberra, Australia, exploring digital modern communication. And while 24:7 is a theatre festival, everybody loves a bit of music, so a double-bass composition, performed and written especially for the event's tenth edition, provides the cherry on top of proceedings.

With performances running several times over, across different venues and at all times throughout the day, there should always be something of interest to catch – and with the shows all clocking in at under an hour each, if you’re at one, you may as well go and watch the next one. And the next one. And the one after that.