Is Queanbeyan's theatre haunted? It is now

The Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre has not been one of them.

Until now.

One of the aims of the upcoming locally made horror-comedy Break a Leg is to bring out the spooky potential of the Q as a location.

In Break a Leg, Patrick Flynn (played by Brendan Kelly), an aspiring actor, arrives at a theatre to audition for what he hopes will be his big break. He recognises another auditionee, Molly McGrath (Kaitlyn Boyé) - a disgraced former child actress - and they get off on the wrong foot.

But then Patrick and Molly find themselves locked inside the theatre and strange things start to happen.

Theatre may be about the blurring of reality and illusion but what's happening is far from the kind of thing they could ever have expected.

"It starts to mess with their heads," Kelly said.

The film also looks at other aspects of the theatre, such as dealing with success and failure and scandal. While each is dealing with his or her own issues, Patrick and Molly will have to work together if they want a chance to make it out alive.

While the characters are not autobiographical, both Kelly and Boyé said they drew on encounters and experiences they'd had during their careers.

Boyé said she used filmmaking as a way to explore deep questions and Break a Leg was no exception.

The filmmakers did not want to give too much away about the story - declining, for example, to say how much blood, if any, will be spilled - but were happy to talk about the film's production.

Kelly and Boyé collaborated on the screenplay and Boyé directed the film, which is currently in post-production.

They are both part of the active Canberra filmmaking scene and each has made short films but this is the first time they've made a feature film of their own.

"We love horror," Kelly said. And they've absorbed many tricks and tropes from immersing themselves in the genre, from silent classics such as Nosferatu to the many recent movies on streaming platform Shudder as well as recent Australian productions such as Talk to Me.

Because their film was an independent low-budget production ("no-budget," Boyé said), funded by themselves, family and friends, and donations made through the Australian Cultural Fund, they needed something that could be produced on a modest scale.

Inspired by single-location, small-cast movies such as Saw, they came up with the idea of using a theatre as the setting last year and wrote the script over three months.

They needed a theatre and the first person they approached was the Q's artistic director, Jordan Best.

"Jordan was very supportive and offered the location for the shoot," Boyé said.

Principal photography took place when the theatre was relatively quiet over three-and-a-half weeks in January with a team drawn from the Canberra filmmaking community including director of photography Miguel Gallagher and editor Sam Hosking.

Native Canberrans both, Boyé and Kelly have been acting on stage and screen for many years.

Boyé's credits include Home and Away and the horror movies Puzzle Box and The Furies.

She recently won awards for best screenplay at the Canberra Short Film Festival and Best mid-length film at the Sydney Women's International Film Festival for her film Straight On 'Til Mourning.

Kelly was also in The Furies and his TV credits include At the Phoenix. Not long ago he finished filming the miniseries The Narrow Road To The Deep North.

He and Boyé have known each other for a long time and have worked together as scene partners, filming dialogues together, which helped when it came to shooting Break a Leg.

Soon he will be directing her, in a short film.