When actors Kaitlyn Boyé and Brendan Kelly came together last year to collaborate on a new project, they had three guiding principles – make something intentionally low to no budget, use a single location with just the two of them, and keep the process creative and fun with a ‘f*ck around and find out’ mentality.
The result is Break A Leg, a horror feature that follows aspiring actor Patrick Flynn (Kelly), who arrives for the audition of his career, only to find himself locked out of the theatre alongside fellow auditionee and disgraced child actress Molly McGrath (Boyé).
After getting off on the wrong foot, Patrick and Molly are forced to confront their egos and individuality, as strange happenings occur and the theatre’s playground of illusions and delusions cloud their outlook and invite them to question what is real.
Production took place at Canberra’s The Q Theatre over three and a half weeks at the beginning of this year, with Boyé serving as director, while also producing alongside Bianca K. Nuñez and Denai Gracie, and editing with Sam Hosking, who doubled as the camera operator. Other key creatives included DOP Miguel Gallagher, sound recordist Jack Rankin, makeup artist Kirsten Pawlicki, and production designer John Silvestro.
Boyé and Kelly, who met on the set of the 2019 web series The Furies, wrote the script over three months during the second half of last year, following a series of brainstorming sessions.
The former said the idea stemmed from a mental image that came to her a at a film festival.
“I had this image of Brendan on stage turning around in a moment of stage fright,” she said.
“That’s all I had, and when I came back, Brendan had some amazing ideas that he read out. I stood up and said, ‘This is the only image I have’, and from there, I have two actors trapped in a theatre’.
“Brendan goes, ‘That’s the one’, and the whole thing went on to write itself.”
Regarding the setting, Kelly said The Q Theatre had been their first choice for the shoot.
“We’ve both worked there before and it has a vibe about it,” he said.
“It’s got that great darkness that theatres have, and parts of it, like the hallways, have this intensity about them that is inherently creepy.”
For Boyé, the theatre environment was part of what she described as a “love letter to horror” that encapsulated different elements of the genre.
“I think what’s most exciting about the theatre setting is that psychological element and the question of what would happen being trapped there with no windows and clocks,” she said.
“Theatres are usually soundproof so you can’t hear what’s going on outside. Also, a theatre is a space for performance and storytelling, so there is illusion, delusion, and questions about what is real. The psychological horror element of seeing what that would do to two people was interesting.”
Now in post-production, the creative team is raising funds to get the film finished via the Australian Cultural Fund with the hope of entering it into festivals at the beginning of next year.