Just when it seems everything has been done on stage, screen or YouTube, theatre veterans can still be astonished.
Some months ago the Poppy Seed Theatre Festival invited 12 shortlisted theatre companies to pitch an idea to a panel of experienced stage identities.
"On the live pitch day, a 16-year-old-girl used three dolls to tell a story about being at a party and what occurred," says Scott Major, one of the festival's directors. "We had 17 people in the room who've all seen a lot of theatre. Yet at the climax of the story, I've never heard a sharper intake of breath."
Major won't reveal the girl's story, but the show in question – F. – created by the Riot Stage company, turns on teenagers, sex and the internet. It arose out of surveys and frank conversations with young people about the digital landscape of sex.
Riot Stage is heading for its opening night confident that an idea, a killer story, can get you in the door even without a completed script. Their experience chimes with the popularity of The Moth nights, originating in the United States, which revolve around telling stories live – the sharing of a tale that gains its power not from set, lights or costumes but by igniting imagination.
Danny Delahunty, director of another play in the festival, Blessed, zeroes in on the trend. "I love scripted theatre but out of the festival's four, three are devised pieces. They represent the shift in theatre in Melbourne; it's where our artistic drive is coming from."
Major points out that, in the contemporary spirit of reimagining myths and messing with the classics, the plays "do come from a kernel of a story".
Riot Stage says F. "springboards from Frank Wedekind's classic Spring Awakening", a play about erotic fantasies and the sexuality of youth that shocked audiences with its blazing candour more than a century ago.
The four plays develop from skeletal to fully formed because Poppy Seed, which has government and corporate sponsorship, invests in them. The Hotel Now company's What's Yours is Mine, for example, is inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Proposal – the historic source is "the bone" says Major. "The companies add the meat as they go."
This year's selection panel including actor-director Rachael Maza and actor Bert LaBonte. Nadine Garner is the festival's patron.
There are no specific criteria, and the panel's assessment comes down to "the writing, the artistic vision and an explanation of how they will realise it", says Major.
There's generally a consensus when choosing a shortlist of 12, but the final four can be more contested between the panelists, he says. Each of the four finalists receives a venue and $7500 to be spread across sets and staging, artists' payments and marketing and publicity. Mentoring and other development is offered.
The four companies come together to create a kind of ensemble, meeting each Monday night.
"All four groups share resources, work out logistics and joint marketing," says Major. "Any problems they have they can work out together. The idea is to expand a support group within the Melbourne artistic community."
The braver ones present a few half-formed scenes. "The offer is there for every production that the whole ensemble or the artistic panel can come and watch a rehearsal, whatever stage it's up to. Feedback can be given through the producer … you can put something up that might not be ready in front of people that won't tear it apart."
Delahunty says he's open to the idea, as he works through rehearsals with his company, Attic Erratic. Written by Fleur Kilpatrick, Blessed is a story of poverty.
"Fleur talks about recently re-reading Road, the Jim Cartwright play (set in a deprived Lancashire community in the 1980s); this angry voice about people being downtrodden as the mines closed during the Thatcher era ... she thought why don't we have this voice in Australian theatre and what would that voice be like?
"We've had this intergenerational poverty here with people not being able to step up and out of their situation because of limited opportunities. This play is about not really being given a choice. The narrative is a love story, two people drawn together and torn apart by their circumstances. By exploring them, we're trying to give a voice in a new work to characters not often given a voice. A lot of writers come from middle-class backgrounds."
Cut to Three Birds Theatre company, which takes the season from poverty to privilege. The production LadyCake is based around Marie Antoinette, celebrity and social media.
The fourth show, What's Yours is Mine, argues that ownership – home, family, appliances – "is inescapably woven into the Australian psyche". In their sights is the absurdity of excess.
While the four plays are distinct entities, a few common themes seem to be leeching between them; ownership, wealth and possessions, or the lack of them. It might be a stretch to suggest the independent companies behind them have been starved to the bone for so long that it's become the subject of their art.
But it is true many small theatre companies spend a good chunk of their lives writing grant applications, and seeking patrons such as Poppy Seed. Pessimism around national arts funding persists. Independents go from project to project, being inventive with few resources and many risk burnout.
"That was one of the kernels of Poppy Seed," says Major, "to stop the burnout, to help secure in some small way Melbourne's artistic future, to keep some of these talented people, to be there for years to come and help them get more exposure because of the strength of the festival as a whole."
Culture is a broad church and when Major's not looking out for new theatre he's directing episodes of Neighbours out at Nunawading. "That's what keeps me fresh and invigorated. The fast turnaround of television is very different from independent theatre."
Seeding stories takes time; a commitment not lost on Major when he came up with the name of a festival created "to grow the tall poppies of tomorrow".
The Poppy Seed Theatre Festival, November 8-December 11. poppyseedfestival.com.