DO YOU GET MY MEANING? Set for Fringe World Festival, Begin. 2/7

AUDIENCES will get an insight into the audition process as a play-within-a-play comes to life at The Flying Scotsman's Velvet Lounge this February.

Presented by Groovy Boots Theatre as part of FRINGE WORLD Festival 2014, Do You Get My Meaning? spoofs the experimental theatre experience.

The play has already been cast and the actors know their roles - yet they're made to feel they're improvising, knowing they're auditioning for a role they already have.

A spanner gets thrown in the works when an audition occurs by accident and the intruder notices the play doesn't have an ending.

Writer and director Chris Greenwood was motivated to write a show for FRINGE WORLD after seeing some local productions at the 2013 event.

"My wife suggested I should write something if I thought it was so easy," he said. "I tried to maintain an experimental theme for the show with a series of meaty roles for the players.

"The intruder who accidentally auditions adds a spontaneous flavour to the play and he turns out to be more of a help than a hindrance."

It was Greenwood's performance as a boulder - yes, a rock - in a Year 2 nativity play at Gnowangerup Primary School that got him hooked on the theatre arts.

From the mid-80s to mid-90s, he worked as a drama teacher and then spent 17 years in Esperance, performing at the historic Bijou Theatre in productions such as Cosi, Guys and Dolls, It's My Party, The Importance of Being Earnest and Hotel Sorrento.

Groovy Boots Theatre was set up as an independent production company by Chris Thomas and Phil Barnett in 2010 to deliver paid acting opportunities for actors, under a profit-share agreement.

The results have a been sell-out season of the Australian wedding farce Dimboola, the WA premiere of the bizarre Christmas comedy The Eight: Reindeer Monologues and a season of He Died with a Felafel in His Hand described by one of the playwrights as "possibly the definitive version".

Greenwood appeared as several characters in Felafel and his observations of the show's audition, rehearsal and performance process helped him craft the script for Do You Get My Meaning?

In addition to writing and directing the show for FRINGE WORLD, he's also appearing in it - as the director taking people through the auditions.

"I know that will mean plenty of challenges for me but I have a strong cast to bring off a slightly obscure script using minimal movement and meaty characterisations," Greenwood said.

Do You Get My Meaning? plays at 7.30pm February 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21 and 22, followed by Groovy Boots Theatre's other FRINGE WORLD show The Adventures of Scrote Man & Pube Boy which plays at 8.45pm on the same dates.

Tickets for each show are $17.50 - book at www.fringeworld.com.au.

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