The Big Green Apple is a brand new transatlantic theatre collaboration between Origin New Irish Theatre and the Attic Studio Dublin.

The ambitious project will see ten bite-size plays from new Irish writers be written, rehearsed and staged in just one week. Only five of these will make it to the bright lights of Broadway.

The challenge is that ten “green” new Irish writers get a theme set by George Heslin in New York. They have 48 hours to write ten brand new plays. A professional cast and selected established theatre directors then have 48 hours to cast, direct and rehearse and stage these new works. The team supporting these new writers includes multi-award winning directors Raymond Keane (Barabbas Theatre) and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh.

On September 29th the ten ten-minute plays will be staged for one night only in Dublin’s Liberty Hall Theatre.

The audience alongside a panel of esteemed theatre judges including Marina Carr, (‘Portia Coughlan’ World Tour), award winning writer Gary Duggan (‘Amber’ RTE), and Deirdre Kinahan (‘Halycon Days’ Edinburgh Fringe First award) will judge which of these five will go on to be produced as part of Origin Theatre’s First Irish Festival in 2014.

This exciting format was devised from a collaboration of ideas between George Heslin, Artistic Director of Origin’s 1st Irish Festival and Camille Donegan of Dublin’s Attic Studio. The Big Green Apple is their pioneering innovation to develop and inspire a generation of new voices that will continue to shine in the literary world to follow in the footsteps of Shaw, Wilde, Beckett, McDonagh and Heaney.