24/10: Showtime

I returned to the theatre a bit after five. My first impression was that everyone I saw looked bleary with fatigue, and also high on the process. Josh and I talked about how rehearsals had gone, and he showed me how the cardboard would figure in their solution for the thirty-year switch: part of it would be a sign (“thirty years earlier”) and part of it was cut up into mortarboards, which the characters would throw into the gorge to signal their graduation—a very theatrical moment, as they floated above us.

Everyone assembled in the theatre auditorium at 6 pm for the last drawing, to establishing the order of the seven plays being presented. Mine was going to be the opening act. We had about 40 minutes before it all started, and I walked down to Old Town to get a big Café Americano, and was amazed at all the people out for Arts Alive. I hadn’t been over to the Eureka version for awhile—it had become quite a trendy activity.

By game time, I sensed that the event had changed a bit. There was no more mention of any competition, and the judges (teacher/director Jyl Hewston and actor/director/teacher James Floss) were now going to lead a play-by-play talk-back. Both Tinamarie and Dan spoke, and I believe it was Tinamarie who stressed that this event was about the process—it was essentially for us.

Maybe they had also begun to wonder if we would get an audience. By the time it started I wasn’t in much shape to observe the audience, but we did seem to have one. The problem would be that theoretically, seven ten minute plays would equal a 70 to 90 minute show. But ten pages doesn’t always translate into ten minutes, and it sure didn’t that night. We started at 7:30 and were still going strong at 10. So by the end, there was mostly just us.

As if we cared! I have no idea what my show was like (the wisdom of the process at the O’Neill Center came back to me—all of their new plays have two performances, because the playwrights commonly blank out for the first one.) But going first meant I could enjoy the other shows, and I did. At times they were surprisingly polished, and there was always something funny or poignant or otherwise delightful in all of them. Seeing them and hearing them discussed by those concerned during the talkback (which began in the auditorium but eventually adjourned to the lobby upstairs, where the wine, beer and food was) revealed the intelligence, care and creativity brought to bear by everyone involved; the individuality of the talent, and yet, the warm collaborative atmosphere.

My play and hence my talkback went first, and I learned more about it from comments by Jyl and James, and by Josh and the one of the actors who participated. I can only recall snippets from the rest of the evening. Like… Alton San Giovanni--the “teen playwright”-- describing how he concentrated on the rhythm of the dialogue in his dramatization of an Internet conversation between teenagers and an online predator.

And JM Wilkerson (a recent addition to the North Coast and its theatre community—he’s the spouse of HSU theatre’s Rae Robison and acted in last year’s HSU production, The School for Scandal) revealed that his piece was more autobiographically based than anything he’d previously written for the stage. He acknowledged that he’d drawn the perfect cast and director to bring it to life in so short a time. (I was really excited about his piece, and started babbling at him about it when we ran into each other after the show—just as he was babbling at me about elements he liked in my piece. I suspect this sort of thing was happening a lot that night.)

I recall Ken remarking on the consistently nurturing atmosphere. Gretha Omey talked about how she came up with a simple staging device (directors had only a few pieces and platforms to work with) that served the script she directed remarkably well, brought out its comedy and pathos while giving the actors the physical grounding they needed to elaborate their parts.

I think it was Joshua Stanfield Switzer who talked about the crucial decision all the directors had to make: should they do the play with the actors carrying their scripts and referring to them, or should they take the time for the actors to try to memorize their parts? He decided to try memorization for one hour, to see if it would work. I recall one actor talking about the freedom to improvise, especially in rehearsal, without carrying the script. But eventually many if not most of the actors in most of the plays wound up carrying scripts, or needed to.

I personally am a big fan of script-in-hand, as it’s called. I’ve seen it used in new play productions where there is much more time for rehearsal. Even at the O’Neill. Except in certain circumstances, where physical theatre is called for, I think it should be standard for situations like this. I’ve found that audiences quickly adapt to seeing scripts, and actors adept at using them make you absolutely forget that they are carrying them. Script-in-hand as the standard saves a lot of time that can be used to work on the other aspects of the production, especially characterization and movement. Plus more of the playwright’s actual lines get delivered.

On the overall process: the 24 hour part of it is clearly a gimmick, and this all was mostly a game—fun and productive, but limited and, as I may have pointed out, insane. It may be that Tina and Dan expected the short writing time would result in skeleton scripts that mandated more improvizational acting, but that's not what seems to have happened. It just made it really crazed. I also can see the potential for a new niche in contemporary theatre: the 24 Hour Playwright, adept at just the right combination of elements in a simple, “actor-proof” script to dazzle judges and audiences. No harm in that, I suppose. But I’m glad that most of us appeared to take the opportunity we had to push ourselves creatively.

This kind of event, so compressed and concentrated on process, often creates bonds that outlast the event itself. It would be an important but additional payoff of this experience if it happens. We’ll see. Maybe it will also lead to more new work being done here. As for now, I'll remember it as a lot of fun.

Once again, the organizers and administrators of this insanity, who worked themselves silly, were Tinamarie Ivey and Dan Stone (he also directed JM Wilkerson’s piece.) I don’t have a list of the actors, but here are the other participating playwrights: Morgan Beck, Steven King, Craig Klapman, Alton San Giovanni, Ken Gray Scolari and JM Wilkerson. Besides Joshua Koenig, the other directors were Gretha Omey, Rhy Corral-Ribordy, Zachary Rouse, Dan Stone, Joshua Stanfield Switzer and Laurene Thorpe. My thanks to everyone involved, including Margaret, who showed up to watch.

If any of the other participants (including audience) would like to comment on their experience, it'd be great if you did so hereabouts.