Dominic Mercer

In 2016, director Dominic Mercer and actor/playwright Sam O’Sullivan joined forces to stage O’Sullivan’s play, The Block Universe (Or So It Goes). As part of the crowd funding campaign they decided to publish the script and offer it as a reward for donors. The resulting publication not only helped pay for the production, but also proved to be an extremely valuable marketing tool for the show after it’s premiere season and for the promotion of its playwright... And this was how the idea of 8th Buffalo Press was formed.

A year on and we have formalised the model. We believe that the most exciting new Australian playwriting is taking place on our independent stages, and this means that almost everything goes under resourced and unpublished - which makes a first life hard, and a second unlikely.

By publishing and selling the scripts as part of a fundraising campaign, funds can be funnelled into making sure that the premiere production of a script is better resourced, and the chance for a second life of the production.

The model is simple. 8th Buffalo Press edit, format, design and publish a script. It is then sold as part of an initial crowd-funding scheme for an already programmed production of that work. The money is then used to go towards the presentation of the work!

Our first official 8th Buffalo script couldn't be any more exciting! A scintillating work that won the 2011 Patrick White Award and is being presented at Old 505 Theatre, July 4th-15th with a spellbindingly brilliant creative team:

LITTLE BORDERS 

by PHILLIP KAVANAGH

Directed by DOMINIC MERCER
Set Designers CHARLIE EDWARD DAVIS & JEREMY ALLEN
Costume Designer ISABEL HUDSON
Lighting Designer EMMA LOCKHART
Composer & Sound Designer CLEMENCE WILLIAMS
Producer DINO DIMITRIADIS
Assistant Director JOSEPH BROWN

WITH: LUCY GOLEBY & BRANDON MCCLELLAND

For more information about the show, visit the 505 Website here:
https://old505theatre.com/shows/the-little-red-suitcase-1480214047.html

The funds will be used to offset the initial costs of publishing the script. Purchasing the ISBN, designing the cover, formatting the document etc. but these are raw costs and kept to an absolute minimum by 8th Buffalo.

The real value of this model is that the majority of the money goes straight towards the production of Little Borders by Phillip Kavanagh at the Old 505 Theatre. This means that your contribution goes towards covering our rent, to putting costumes on our actors, to buying material for our sets, to appease the mysterious APRA gods, to assist our publicity campaign... all the nuts and bolts of independent theatre making that needs to be taken care of out of necessity before the artists get paid.

This then frees up much more of the box office to go directly to the pockets of the artists who are presenting this work, and the presentation of the work is the most important part of this entire process. 

Buy a script? Help put on a play! It is that simple.

About the show:

Elle and Steve are desperate to move into a gated community. Elle can’t sleep. They’re worried their neighbours might be planning something sinister. Surely the walls of the community will keep them safe. But Elle hears a noise in the night…

With more and more Australians moving into gated communities, suburbs becoming cultural microcosms of division and an increasing sense of distrust disseminated by press, politicians and social media echo chambers, 'Little Borders' was a prophetic first play from one of Australia’s brightest young writers. Five years after it won the Patrick White Award, this razor sharp text is getting a disturbingly timely premiere.

We are absolutely passionate that this is an exciting and innovative way to continue to support vibrant writing and independent theatre in Australia, but maybe we are wrong. We need the whole community, audience and artists alike, to get behind the idea and support 8th Buffalo Press in publishing this script, so that we can do it again and again and again. So that new work can be presented on stage again and again and again. We have spoken widely to the community of writers and the independent artists who present their work on stage. They have said that they want to do it, and we have two more scripts ready and waiting for 2017... We hope that you share our vision.

Our dream is that we will be printing a second run before the season at 505 closes.