Tauranga's creatives are being called upon to help 16th Avenue Theatre explore new paths and bring new types of theatre to local stages.

An open meeting is being held at the theatre on Monday evening, with anyone interested in producing new, innovative theatre invited to attend.

16th Avenue Theatre president Sarah Oemcke says while the theatre produces many great shows with ‘mainstream' appeal, they're also interested in facilitating more fringe material, and building an audience for that.

'We have a lot of writers internally, but not much of a way of getting their stuff to stage. We want to connect writers and actors together to produce new work. We also have people interested in producing ‘pint-sized' plays, which are five-minute plays that can be staged as a series together.”

Actors, playwrights, theatre sports enthusiasts, organisers/marketers, directors, and technical crew are among the types of people encouraged to turn up for the meeting to share ideas.

Sarah says the theatre is also looking at doing a ‘play in a day' in May, which would be similar to the 48-hour film festival, except instead of making a short film, participants would rehearse and perform a short play in a similar amount of time.

She says there's a number of people who've expressed interest so far.

'We just need to get all these excited people in one room and come up with a way of making it work.”

The public meeting is at 16th Avenue Theatre at 7pm on Monday February 26. For more info visit the 16th Avenue Theatre website or Facebook page.