The 24-Hour Play Festival.
It's pretty much what it sounds like. In 24 hours, participants gather, write, cast, rehearse, and perform a play. Well--that statement needs some amending. It's not one big play; writers are not smushed together and told to work collaboratively. Every writer writes his or her own play, unless they request to co-write beforehand. Also, the performance is technically the 25th hour--it starts at 10:00pm Saturday, the performance is 10:00pm Sunday. But everything else is all one very, very long day.
You may wonder how it can be that all that can be done in just 24 hours. The answer is simple: when you're doing a "normal" production of a play, you know all those times you, like, go home and do other things in your life before going back to rehearsal? Those times don't exist. There is nothing but the play.
So. As I said, it started at 10:00. There was a lot of hanging around waiting for things to happen for the first half-hour or so, and then there was group singing (there was actually quite a lot of group singing over the day, just because they were songs people tended to know (read: broadway songs) and it was a good way to pass the time), and then there were important announcements. I was assigned my director and my cast size (two girls and one guy) by 10:45--oh yeah, I was a writer. Of course. I could have acted (it was my second choice on my registration form) but I do consider myself a writer before I am an actor, I am a stronger writer than actor, etc. In any case, I was a writer for the festival. So I had those things by 10:45. I met with my director; he told me to surprise him but requested that I include aliens. I told him I could do that. The directors and actors all went off to do postering (i.e., put up posters and publicize in general), probably the tech people did too (or maybe they slept, cheaters!) and us writers (there were five of us--so five plays would be produced, each aimed at around ten minutes long) started writing.
I didn't start having an idea until a minute or two after my director left. But after that it kind of spiraled into awesomeness. I went back to my dorm room (which was, for the record, about a ten-minute walk) and started to write. About three hours later, I was done. I had written a nine-page play.
I'd like to make a side-note here. My play was not significant just because it's the first thing I've completed in script format since Sheep: A Window and its sequel(s). It's not significant just because I wrote it so quickly. It's significant because it is the first thing I've written to have significant profanity. And ooh, I know, the whole go-off-to-college-and-now-I-write-curse-words... it really wasn't like that. I tend to not like it when writers say that they had to write something because the story just forced it to happen, because that's totally not true--if they really didn't want to do it, they could rewrite the story up to that point to remove the need. But I--my character needed to rant. And he needed to curse, because my characters don't all share my aversion to it. And I totally didn't have time to go back and change the emotional build-up that required the rant. I was on page six and had only an hour left before deadline. I chose the easy way out. (To be fair, I IMed J.T. and was like "I need to write profanity! Help!" and he proceeded to, um, help.) So now that I've done it, I can say: wow, I'm bad at writing profanity. And I was not very comfortable doing it. Hopefully I can continue to avoid it in the future. Oh, and if you want to read it or give it to someone else to read but you don't want that stuff in there, perhaps I can go in and censor things. If you ask nicely enough. Or something. I don't know.
Anyway! So I wrote my play, and it was done around 2:00am (deadline was 2:30; once I got past page six I powered through to the end); I was actually the first writer done, but it wasn't a significant lead. We all printed out a bunch of copies using the printer in the office at Todd Theater (where all this was taking place, excluding things like my visit to my dorm room to write), then waited for the others to come back. They did, I let my director read my play, he liked it, he picked a page-ish to be the audition side, and we sat around waiting (and singing) some more until everyone was ready to proceed.
The directors gathered in the green room to get ready for auditions. I was assured that writers were also welcome, so I joined them; I was one of three writers in there. I don't know where the other two went, but I didn't see them for a long time, so I suspect they cheated and slept and had a normal day until Sunday evening. Cheaters. Bah them.
The directors debated a bit about how auditions would be done, then it was decided that they would use the audition sides from two of the plays as kind of the standard, then use the rest later for callbacks for specific roles. The two plays chosen were mine (called "Genie" because one of the characters is a genie and I had no better title; the title ended up just being The Genie) and the one written by the only non-freshman writer, a girl who is actually a senior and wrote in all three previous 24-hour play festivals during her time at Rochester. (Her play went by a different name every hour, it seemed, but a useful short moniker was "Internet Destruction.") The directors took too long to decide, though, and they were already running late, so auditions started at 4:00am, a full half-hour late.
The format of the audition had the usher-type people (they managed the crowds and ran the errands, poor them) bring in first a group a three, who would read the audition side from my play, then a group of four, who would read the audition side from the other play, and back and forth like that. Because that meant four girls read for every three guys, and there were eight actors of each gender, we saw some people more than once--the directors called them "fake callbacks," and they went on longer than strictly necessary to see everybody because directors requested certain people be brought back to read with the new people (hence, you know, fake callback) so it wasn't incredibly efficient. In any case, after each group had read and left, each director told the girl who was running the whole festival who they wanted to call back for what role, and after the auditions and fake callbacks were over, the real callbacks began. Then those were over, and the directors had to fight over casts.
I say "fight," but really it was an incredibly cooperative process. The directors could all recognize that a given actor may be best in some given role, even if they would have preferred them in their own play. Then there was the negotiating so everyone got a least one of their first-choice cast, and nobody was forced to accept beyond second-choice because some willingly said stuff like "I'm really happy with these two, so I'll take [some actor not in high demand] for my third" and really I was very impressed. No hard feelings at all. Everybody ended up happy. Then the actors got the cast lists while the directors (and hanger-on writers like me) met with the designers and got told tech limitations. (We writers had been told what we could write in general terms; now the directors were being told specifically what they could use, like the lighting guy saying "You each get one special" or the sound guy saying "You each get two sounds (though you can play each one as often as you want)" and such. Then the directors told the designers what they knew they needed, and were told they had to finalize those lists by noon. This was around 5:45am.
Then we (meaning me and my director) met with our actors officially for the first time. Our assigned rehearsal space for this first rehearsal was the basement of Drama House; it was just a little awesome getting to go in there. We rehearsed. And when we were done, it was fully light out--it had been lightish when we went into Drama House, but it was fully day when we went out. Also, the actors only introduced themselves to me (in that whole shake-hands-and-say-names way) after the rehearsal was over, which amused me. Also another note because I feel like it: my director was at this point saying that my play was the best of the five, but my actors were all "Well, I haven't read the others" and such. Well, to blatantly break the narrative flow and jump ahead to the future, by the end of the festival almost everyone had told me that they loved my play, and a fair number did explicitly say it was the best, including my actors. So, all told, I guess the festival didn't hurt my ego too much.
Anyway, though rehearsal was over, the actors technically had to keep working so they could be off-book, y'know, ever. But my director--and more importantly, I--had a break. So I walked that long walk back to my dorm and grabbed some sleep. Three and a half hours, yo. I woke up at 11:20 (I set my alarm, it wasn't magical or anything) and trudged back to Todd to be there at 11:45 when we were supposed to meet before the first tech run. It wasn't a real tech run, it was just a run-through in front of the tech people so they could see what they had to work with, with the directors just kind of standing there going like "Blackout here, sound here," etc.
Then we were released to rehearse some more. The memorization of lines was far more important than rehearsing blocking (the blocking was really just fluid and my director let the actors do what they wanted as long as it wasn't wrong) so we went and sat outside and just ran lines for a while. It quickly became clear how each of the actors were with lines; one girl knew all of her lines and the others' too (though she had rather fewer lines than the others, so it was kind of easier for her), the other girl knew what she had to say but knew a lot of them in paraphrased form (she did learn them correctly as time went on), and the guy just had a whole lot of trouble. Amusingly (for me, anyway), one of his big trouble sections was the rant, so eventually we gave up and he just ad libbed it each time. All my stress and effort was for naught! Heh, but no, it was fine.
At around 2:20pm, I had a moment where I realized that I had finished writing the play only about twelve hours before, but it didn't really feel like my play they were rehearsing--but it so did, if that makes sense. Also, there was while were sitting out there half an hour when we took a break from the working and just sat and talked. Much to my delight, a lot of the conversation was driven by my director (who is also a freshman) asking the actors (who are a sophomore and juniors) about theatery stuff, ranging from past productions (365 days/365 plays last year!) to OBOC (two of them are in it, which makes me happy--when I join, which I so will, I'll know people!) to... other stuff. That was a fun half-hour.
Around 4:00 we decided a real break was needed, so we dispersed, and I went to go eat my one meal of the day in the Pit. After I sat down at my table, one of my actors came up and invited me to come eat with them "outside" (I'm honestly not sure where there is to eat "outside" at the Commons...); I declined, which I do regret, but I still think it was the right decision. For one thing, I was eating the messiest sub ever (and I already knew it was that messy, but I didn't feel like pizza and it's, like, the only other thing for me to eat in the Pit because I don't want sushi), and for another, I had to eat quickly and even tempting me to join a conversation slows me down a lot. And if I wasn't going to participate in the conversation, I would what, just sit there silently eating while they talk? No, I didn't feel like imposing. And I feel like I'm trying to excuse a wrong decision, but I'm not. I think. Moving on!
At 4:45 we met again in Todd, and waited for the real tech run to start, which it finally did at 5:10. We were done twenty minutes later (not bad at all!) and while we waited for the other plays to go through tech (oh, I should mention that my play ended up first in the rotation, both for all these tech runs and the performance itself) we were let go to do what we wanted. Although the actors I'm sure continued to work on their lines (they technically were off book, but they still had trouble, and by "they" I mean "he"), there was no real rehearsal for me to sit in on, so I walked back to the dorm and re-entered the world of normal people, in which it turned out one of the girls had bought a hamster and a crowd was cooing over it in the boys' hallway. And by cooing I do mean cooing. Apparently it was abnormally soft for a hamster. I wouldn't know; I didn't touch it. In any case, I told them all to come see my play and then I went back to Todd, where I proceeded to grab one last half-hour of sleep on the floor of the lobby. (All through the festival, everybody was sleeping on every available horizontal surface for whatever moments they could; I was not abnormal in my floor-nap by any means.)
At 7:30 everybody gathered again and prepared for dress rehearsal, which started at 8:00 and ended around 9:10. Then there was running through the curtain call (one big one at the end of all five plays instead of individual ones), then the transitions between plays, and then it was around 9:40pm. Everybody crowded into the green room, the actors started warming up, and they opened the house.
The warm-up was perhaps the most fascinating ten-ish minutes I saw the whole way through. I stood in a corner and watched (until the very end, when I joined in) and compared it to the warm-ups I know, which is pretty much just Mrs. Hoover's. Of interest:
The tongue-twister "She stood on the balcony inexplicably hiccuping and amicably welcoming him up" (or one close enough for the difference to be negligible), except instead of saying it slowly and precisely to emphasize diction, they said it as rapidly as possible, over and over again (with a quaint pair of claps between each repetition).
There was no real leader of the warm-up. For the tongue-twisters, for example, they just kept saying one until someone started in with a new one, then they all switched. Very ensemble, especially for a group that hadn't technically been working together the whole time, so it was obvious that the group had all worked together before--but I wonder if there were any freshman actors, because they wouldn't have? Unless they got told about it beforehand... I know my director, who is a freshman, was doing it with them, but I don't know if that's because he's really good at picking things up and following along or if he knew it already. Huh.
The shake-down, which I've been told by J.T. has been done in the William & Mary improv group warm-ups, so hey: shake out the right hand as hard as you can while counting down from six, then the left hand, right foot, left foot--then the right hand, counting down from five, etc. The counting down, again, is as fast as possible. While I wonder a little if the speed is because it was a short warm-up, I suspect it's just because they're a group of college actors and faster is just better. (I mean overall the whole warm-up, not just this particular instance. It was very--not rushed, but quickly-moving.)
Their quiet focus thing was interesting, but I'm too lazy to describe it. It was quiet and focussy. It involved holding hands.
And for the final thing, they picked their favorite line (it happened to be one from my play, mostly because my director was very quick to suggest it and the others agreed) from the show, and then whisper-shouted it, and off they went!
Then my director and I tried to go out to sit in the audience so we could watch, but we were told the audience was full. We went out anyway and it was very full. I was told later that "full" actually meant "well past fire code," and even later that that meant "twice the legal limit." For all those people, however, nobody from my hall was among them--they got there just too late and were turned away. Oh well. But to my more immediate plight--we managed to find space standing next to the tech table, but it was hard to cram a bunch of directors in there. I was the only writer who had joined the actors in the green room, it turned out, so the rest had actual seats; that suited me fine, as it just left more room for me to stand.
The performance started on time, amazingly. And, as planned by me and my director (with the cooperation of the tech people, of course), the first thing the audience heard after the standard welcome-turn-phones-off announcement was the beginning of Still Alive. The murmurs from the audience members who recognized it were pretty satisfying. And then my play began.
Just so everyone knows--watching a performance of a play you wrote and helped pull together over the last 24 hours is very nerve-wracking. And I had been doing okay, but after that I was as jittery as someone who had gone at least a few more hours without sleep. Afterwards, in the lobby, when talking to the one person in the audience I recognized (the first girl from the CTF thing, actually--see my last post if confused), I got told rather sternly to go to sleep, which both amused and saddened me. Anyway, back in the performance itself, everything went swimmingly (...I'm not sure why I used "swimmingly," but whatever), the audience loved it, yay. The directors were all happy, at least a majority of the writers were happy (I didn't actually see a couple of them after...) the actors were all happy... it was a very happy time.
Then, once we got rid of the audience, we had to strike. There wasn't really a set, but there were the bleachers the audience's chairs were on (oh, I kept forgetting to mention, the theater in Todd is a black box theater), all of the special lights, the chairs themselves, fun stuff like that. We did it in just half an hour, though. And then there was a lot of hugging and saying goodbye. And then the 24-hour play festival was over and done until next year.
In case this didn't bleed through the writing: IT WAS VERY AWESOME I LOVED IT AHH! I will be doing it again next year, life permitting. End of story.
...Except it isn't the end of the story, because then I went back to my dorm, found my hallmates, got their apologies for not making it in plus their congratulations for surviving it, got the story on a number of injuries that had occurred in my absence, drank two chocolate milks in the café (640 Calories total, whee!), then finally went back to my dorm and collapsed into bed. I fell asleep around 2:00 am. And that is really the end of the story.
Next up: Monday's mall adventure!