It was to have been held in May, but had to be postponed when restrictions on people getting together were imposed after the coronavirus spread around Australia.

The 12 plays that were to have been presented at three venues will now be performed as part of the City of Newcastle's New Annual Festival that will be staged in February 2021.

And two of the three staging venues have been changed, so that the shows can be performed in places where audience members can be seated well apart to avoid the risk of a spread of the coronavirus.

The unchanged venue is the Newcastle Art Space, which is at 91 Chinchen Street, Islington, on the suburb's boundary with Tighe's Hill.

The new places are: The Base, at 3 Tudor Street, Newcastle West, a health and community hall near the intersection with Hunter Street, that was previously a dining and performance space; and The Owen's Collective, in Shop B, 101 Maitland Road, Islington, a former co-op food store that is now a large gallery and event space.

The shows will be performed over six days - Thursday, February 11, to Saturday, February 13, and Thursday, February 18, to Saturday, February 20 - with the sessions staring at 7pm.

The plays are:

The Base: Echoes of the Sound of Music, written and directed by Karen Eastwood; Don't Feed the Lions, writer Karina Young, director Melody Thorburn; How's Anna, written and directed by Michael King; The Extraction Team, writer Sally Davies, director Jay Wood.

Newcastle Art Space (NAS): Evelyn the Vague, writers K. Farrugia and T. Dwyer, director S. Scotton-Moonga; Murder Plot, writer Debra Hely, director Charlie Eastwood; Band Aid, writer Tallulah Eden, director Phoebe Turnbull; Small Hard Truths, written and directed by Vanessa Bates.

The Owens Collective: The Printed Women, writer Willa Hogarth, director Pearl Nunn; Tick a Box, writer Sally Davies, director Catherine Crowley; Refuge, writers K. Farrugia and T. Dwyer, director Danielle Asquith; The 13 Rules of Family, writer Karina Young, director Zac Smith.

Actors are needed for the vast variety of roles. People interested in being in the shows should email microtheatrenewcastle@gmail.com.

The shows will have a tech run on an evening between February 1 and 6 and a dress rehearsal on the afternoon of Saturday, February 7.

There will be an awards presentation on Sunday, February 21.

The awards invariably include a People's Choice category, with audience members at each session asked to vote, on a document that includes the names of all the shows they have just seen, for the one they liked best. Tickets for the shows will go on sale soon.

The Newcastle Micro Theatre Festival grew out of a pilot event put together in 2015 by three ardent theatre-going women - Kate Dun, Mardi Ryan and Megan Hazlett - who wanted to see if people would be interested in staging short new plays in venues that weren't theatres, with coffee shops and art galleries as the main choices.

A key aim of the event was to encourage watchers who weren't regular theatregoers to see live shows.

The show's success led to Micro Theatre becoming an annual event in 2016.

AUSTRALIAN author Joanna Murray-Smith's play, which has six females of very different natures and ages talking about their relationships, problems and occasional successes, has been a global hit since it premiered in Melbourne in 2001. And, while I enjoyed a Newcastle staging in 2019, I found this one, which had four of the women delivering their monologues, to be even more engaging.

Annette Rowlinson, a Wollombi resident who directed the play and is one of the performers, hopes to stage it in Newcastle in 2021 as she had audiences very pleased with a production of the darkly comic The Sum of Us that she presented at the intimate Royal Exchange Theatre in 2019, with the leading man winning a CONDA for his performance.

The Wollombi venue, which was originally a room in a general store, is certainly an intimate venue, with the women in this production making the small stage behind dining tables and chairs the very different venues the characters are in.

The first monologue had Micaela Elphick as Meryl Louise Davenport, a mother in her 30s, trying to care during the daytime for her three children, dropping off and picking up two of them at school, and having to take the third, a baby, with her when her unseen husband demands that she shop for groceries.

Tiggy Entwhistle (Annette Rowlinson) is a member of a team of cactus lovers who deviates from promoting the plants at a meeting attended by other people to talk about her prickly relationship with her male partner.

Theresa McTerry (Catherine Maguire) is in her bridal garb and increasingly noting that her relationship is deteriorating as she waits for her groom. And Winsome Webster (Nicky West) is a widow in her 50s who is a member of a team that help blind people, with the man she is currently assisting making sharp comments about her.

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