1000 MONKEYS Are About to Take Over Red Sandcastle Theatre Again

1000 Monkeys are about to take over the Red Sandcastle Theatre for the second year! Well not really, it's a metaphor, and that's exactly what you'd expect from this crew of 30 enthusiastic playwrights who have agreed to spend 24hours at the theatre creating new works over the August long weekend

(Aug 1-4) as part of the second annual, 1000 Monkey's Playwriting Festival. The Festival culminates in a joyous two day reading of the works on the Sunday Night and the Monday Day of the Long weekend. Of the plays created, three will be picked for productions in September.

The infinite monkey theorem: a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

In 2003, the University of Plymouth Media Lab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes Crested Macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website.

In 2013, without any grants, Rosemary Doyle and the Red Sandcastle Theatre shut 30 playwrights overnight in the Red Sandcastle Theatre 922 Queen Street East, with laptops and supplied food by local Restaurants including: The Roy, Ed Real Scoop, Rashers, The Leslieville Cheese Shop, and Bero - All fabulous restaurants within a block of the theatre. And this year we're doing it again!

Rosemary Doyle, Artistic Director of the Red Sandcastle Theatre, began her playwriting career at the Alumnae's Write NOW 24hour Playwriting Contest. She believes that in this busy world making time for the muse is the greatest challenge. "Still if that`s the theory for monkeys I believe our human, evolved, Playwrights will be able to create something magnificent! Given everybody`s busy lifestyle we are trying it out with 24 hours"

People should feel free to stroll by the Red Sandcastle Theatre and show their support. On Sunday Aug 3rd starting at 8pm readings of the new plays will begin and will continue on Monday Aug 4th starting at 2pm. Admission to the readings are PWYC. "Be prepared to read if asked, as we have no idea what type of characters the writers will emerge with" says Doyle. "All we know is they will be well fed!" Anything is Possible...indeed.

1000 Monkey's Playwriting Festival

Aug 1nd 2013 - 6pm Playwrights arrive

Aug 2rd 2013 - 6pm Playwrights complete

Aug 3th 2013 - 8pm Readings begin

Aug 4th 2013 - 2pm Readings continue

Red Sandcastle Theatre, is a 50 seat storefront Theatre venue which was created in 2011 by Rosemary Doyle as a place where "ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE" A venue which values creation and the ability for people to be able to make theatre when it's still inspiring to them and without losing their shirt. It's so off Broadway, it's in Leslieville.

Post Script on Plymouth Experiment: Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. Phillips said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it. He concluded that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that. ... They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there." Rosemary Doyle believes these playwrights will do better.
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