On Tuesday 13th November my sister and I went to see our good friend Daisy T-G perform her fantastic poem ‘Eye of a Snail’ at LOST Theatre’s 
5 Minute Festival. This week-long festival sees 40 theatre/performance companies perform a piece that cannot last longer than 5 minutes. A total of ten pieces are performed each night Monday-Thursday and on each night a panel of three judges selects two pieces to go through to Saturday night’s final.
It’s a fantastic way to showcase a variety of talent, many of the pieces were short plays that had a cast and director – some pieces were clever, some hilarious, some, well, seriously weird. Variety was certainly what we got. Daisy’s piece was unusual in that it wasn’t a piece of theatre but her performance poetry was certainly theatrical enough to match up. ‘Eye of a Snail’ is a witty, charming and heartfelt piece that darts and drifts through the mind of the poet from the here and now back to the classroom as a 7 year-old and many places in between. Daisy’s electric performance is captivating but you don’t need to take my word for it, you can watch the video (filmed by LOST Theatre) and see for yourself.
There were a couple of other notable pieces from the evening (Eye of a Snail was my favourite, but then I am biased). I particularly enjoyed ‘Side Dish’, a great short piece of abstract theatre, with a fun nonsensical feel was described as ‘a harmonic play exploring the potential of personal growth via a restaurant menu’. I also enjoyed ‘Yesterday’s Shirt’ a funny little piece performed by a guy who looked a lot like Rob Brydon and ‘None of the Above’ which was 5 minutes of craziness based around two guys practicing for his driving theory test when the questions start to become ‘choose your own adventure book’ questions and the adventure starts to become real.
Inventive, bizarre and often well directed and performed this night of short pieces of theatre was well put together and very enjoyable. This was LOST Theatre’s 5th year of running the 5 Minute Festival and I do hope they continue it next year as I am very much looking forward to going!
You can see all of the pieces that were performed on all 4 nights here.
Vikki
Blackshaw Theatre 