Sitcom Trials Competition, Autumn 2009
The Autumn 10th Anniversary season of The Sitcom Trials sees a return to the long-running format, as used on the TV series and Edinburgh Fringe shows, whereby every sitcom is approx 10 minutes long ending in a "cliffhanger" or ad-break moment. The audience votes having seen all sitcoms in contention, then only sees the ending of the winning sitcom. The audience vote alone chooses which sitcoms ending is seen, however a panel of industry judges will decide on which scripts continue to subsequent rounds
The competition runs on Mondays from Oct 19, with two shows per night (full schedule here). There are four heats, two semi-finals, and the grand final, which will take place in the main house of the Leicester Square Theatre on Tuesday 1st Decemeber.
The Trials performs two show each night at 6pm and 8.30pm, with the panel of judges making a decision across the two shows. The judges vote affects which sitcoms go through to the next stage of competition but not which sitcom ending is performed.
The audience vote is also factored in to which sitcom goes on to the next stage of the competition, but in any adjudication or close tally, the panel of judges' decision will be final.
At the end of each show, the audience vote for each performance will be counted and announced, and the winner of the audience vote will perform its ending. After that final performance at the end of the 7pm show, the audience will be told which two sitcoms have been chosen to go through to the next stage of the competition.
The beauty of this format is that the audience is kept involved with the show throughout, influencing its ending every time, with an incentive to wait for that outcome. They can be reassured they're never more than 10 minutes away from something they might prefer, and we don't waste their time with anything they don't like.
While the votes are being counted, and also in between the changeover between sets, the audience are entertained by the reading out of The entries for the TwitFest - the latest incarnation of the Sitcom Trials Pitch Fest - pitches for sitcoms the length of Tweets. The funniest of these read out during the show wins a small prize. Again, the audience's involvement with the show is paramount, hopefully the Twitcoms are not funnier than the sitcoms in the main competition, though in the past this has been known to happen!