Aftermath and Afterthoughts

After 27 hours, the 24-Hour Theatre project is over. It was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed working with a great group of creators and I saw three incredible pieces of theatre produced. Here are some of my reflections from the project.

Genres

I originally ruled out historical as a potential genre thinking it too unwieldy to work with in a 24-Hour time frame. Then my group drew historical for our genre. Well, when you're on the spot you look at things differently. It didn't matter if historical was unwieldy, my group was going to do it anyway. No one in my group was a history expert, but that didn't matter. We structured our play so we could fit the genre without having to be experts. Our solution was to use an historical event as the background to our piece. It still required a fair amount of research, but it was less likely that we were going to get called out for anachronisms or factual errors. There are probably other solutions, but necessity really is the mother of invention.

Games

I brought games to play when people needed a break. They never left my bag. My group never got so frustrated with each other that we needed time apart, thought we got that anyway as tasks pulled us in separate directions. When we did need a break from working the play we did not want games. We wanted to rest, lie down, eat. There is no time for casual game playing in a 24-Hour theatre project. Leave that for the after party.

Revisions

Revisions are necessary. You can't hope to get a great script written in 24 hours. It's not going to happen. It is even less likely to happen in twelve. It is definitely not going to happen in three. I don't know the process the other groups went through, but we were revising our script until hour 21. At that point we declared we could afford no more changes (though we still had a few minor changes as we finished memorizing). For that reason we were the last group (I believe) to be off-script. However, I think it was worth it. The changes we were making at the very end were vital to making our end product better.

When I do this again I will definitely be encouraging my group to keep editing, refining, adding, and cutting until the last minute. It might make the memorization more stressful, but it will be worth it. Ending the writing process too soon could possibly be the worst mistake a group could make

Sleep
Sleep was definitely worth it. Everyone slept, some more than others. I managed to be sleeping alone in the dressing room while other members of the project slept in the lobby or on the landing. It was like I had my own little suite. How did I get so lucky? Most of the cast and crew actually went home to sleep. Some of them went home and didn't sleep much. I am ambivalent about staying in the theatre to sleep. I didn't sleep well because it was an unfamiliar environment. Also, there wasn't a large social aspect. When people stopped working for the night they generally didn't want to stay and socialize. They wanted to sleep. So, the major benefit of staying in the theatre is less-travel time. But sleeping better at home might be worth the travel time.

I told the theatre owner that next year I'll spend the week leading up to the project sleeping in the theatre to help acclimatize myself. He laughed.

Improvements

If I did the project again would I do it differently? Yes! But not completely. I am incredibly pleased with how my group worked, solved problems, created sets. I would work with all of them again in a heartbeat and hope that they can say the same about me. What would I do differently? I can't really verbalize it well but I know there is always room for improvement.

Beyond improvement for how I personally approached the project, I also have ideas about how to do variations on the show. One of my last minute dreams was to include surprise celebrity guests, but I'm not sure NPH, Bill Murray, or Nathan Fillion will be available. I have other ideas too and you better believe I'll be sharing them with the organizers. What are they? Well, that would be giving you spoilers, but they are some wonderful ideas. Okay, you talked me into sharing one idea. A theatre experience much like Survivor were you start off with a group who has to collaboratively create and perform a show. Then after the show you have to vote a person out of the group and do it again with one less person in the group. Not really feasible for amateurs, but if you could find the people who had the time and venue that could be a lot of fun.

Finally, thank you to everyone who participated in the project, came to see the show, or has followed this blog. I don't know when I'll blog next here. There might be some random posts in the interval before the next 24-hour theatre project. If not, I hope you're reading this again next year. Until then, ciao!