Online Soap is a collective art-making project that will bring together young people aged 12 to 25 years from across Australia to develop, write, perform, shoot and edit an original ’soap opera’. Using the soap opera format each theatre/group will be responsible for the creation and presentation of an episode of this original drama. Each episode will be broadcast on the Internet and the completed series will be collated in a DVD.
Episode 1 (19Mb)
Episode 2 (31Mb)
Episode 3 (35Mb)
The large majority of young people religiously watch soap operas such as Neighbours and Home & Away. Every evening they switch on their TV and disappear into the trials and tribulations of the characters that inhabit these shows. These young people form a dedicated audience base that have kept these series in production and given many young actors a start in the ‘industry’. And for many of these young people, their dream is to get a chance to star in aTV soap. Whether you love them or hate them, there is no denying that soap operas and their formulaic stories have managed to captivate a vast majority of young people in a way that theatre hasn’t. It is easily accessible, free (as long as you have a TV), and it allows the viewer to escape into a reality based fantasy for a short time.
Online Soap will tap into young people’s enjoyment of soap operas and will give them the opportunity to create and produce an entirely original soap. The young participants will collaborate on the development of the soap through online discussions and forums. The world of the soap opera (characters, relationships, setting and etc) and the ’stories so far’ will be negotiated and established by the participants during their online discussions. Each company/group will then be responsible for writing, performing, shooting and editing a ten minute episode of the series.
For the pilot episode, PYT hosted a series of Acting for Screen workshops over a ten week period in which to train young people for their screen debut. With the help of Writing and Performance students from the University of Western Sydney, the participants devised a story line and characters for the drama and a script was improvised around this.
A group of local young filmmakers, Rumble Pictures, was engaged to direct, shoot and edit the episode, ensuring that the drama was completely created by young people. Director and editor Ryan Peters from Rumble played a pivotal role in the creation of Episode 1, taking the idea from script to screen. The production of the episode, including, shooting, editing, online posting and sound composition was over an eight week period. The sound and music element was also created by young people. Sound artist Simon Winkler composed the sound track and in response to the content of the episode, two South West Sydney Hip Hop artists Jay Tharappel and Sukhdeep Singh aka Pointblank Kid and L-Fresh wrote and produced an original track entitled Drug Slave.
Click here to download the track
In the following stages of the project, the soap will be created in sequential order and as each episode is completed it will be uploaded onto the net for viewing and comments. Groups will not know the exact nature of their ’starting point’ until the previous episode has been completed and uploaded for viewing. In the interim periods (while awaiting their ‘turn’) groups will work with professional artists on writing, camera and acting skills, and they will begin to develop possible scenarios for their episode. Episodes are broadcast over the Internet for all the participants and any one else who discovers the project while searching the web. A forum like discussion area will be set up on the PYT MySpace page to enable discussions of the work, the next episode and ideas for future projects. Once the entire soap opera series is complete it will be compiled into a single DVD.
Online Soap was a concept that was conceived from Regional Gathering in 2004. Canberra Youth Theatre (CYT) responded to the calls of young people from across their region to engage in collective art-making. PYT was one of the companies engaged in producing an episode until the coordination and producing was handed over following a change with CYT. Online Soap affirms established relationships and aims to forge new ones between youth arts organisations / companies. It will ‘tour’ work across Australia, with a distant goal to further internationally. Online Soap will also assess the viability of collaborative, web-based performance and presentation.
Timeline
Episode 1 – Powerhouse Youth Theatre – August 2007
Episode 2 – Canberra Youth Theatre – September 2007
Episode 3 – Backbone Youth Arts – December 2007
Episode 4 – SYTE Adelaide – April 2008
