The Story
The 24 Hour Theatre Festival Entertains Again
It was this past Saturday night. The stage was set. The playwrights had labored all night in preparation for this moment. The actors had rehearsed since the early morning. The directors had spent all days at the helm, steering these 5 plays until they were ready to be shown under the bright lights of the stage in PBK’s Lab Theatre in front of an eager audience. It was show time, and just another year for one of the College’s most unique theatre traditions, the seventh annual 24-Hour Play Festival.
The project began seven years ago as a fundraiser for Alpha Psi Omega, the Greek organization made up of W&M’s theatre students. The president of this organization, Megan Behm, ’11, was kind enough to explain how the play festival worked.
“The auditions began at 8 PM on Friday night," Behm said. "We had 42 people audition and everyone was cast into five plays. This is an especially great opportunity for freshman interested in theatre, and a lot of them audition.”
But how can a play go from an idea to the stage in just 24 hours? Some crazy, unique, and utterly hilarious ideas have made their way to the stage over the years according to Behm. One such play was called “My Wife is not a Fan,” about a husband having an affair with a desk fan. Behm herself was involved with a play from the past about “a bus full of people headed to Hell,” she plainly stated. Behm was elected to the board as a sophomore and became president this year. She’s had her share of problems with the festival, and said that one year, "there weren’t enough actors, so I had to step in.” In other words, she’s the person who makes it all happen.
I had the opportunity to talk with the actors for a play called “Didn’t Love It,” about the various ways people can react to the word “love,” and how it’s ultimately just a word without any meaning behind it. All the actors I talked to were freshmen, except for one who was a sophomore transfer. One student said the play was “like the movie Valentine’s Day, but without the fun.”
The director of the play, Jacquie Harris, ’11, said that this was the first time she’d ever directed a play or even been involved with the 24 Hour Play Festival. I asked her how she got to do this particular play and she said the people of Alpha Psi Omega who are in charge "try their best to match up one playwright with one director to make it as easy as possible to transfer the ideas from paper to stage.”
I was lucky enough to speak to Charles Cooper, ’12, who is the playwright of “Didn’t Love It,” “My Wife is not a Fan,” and a play about a man who used orange juice as cologne. When asked why he decided to become a playwright, he said “well, I acted a lot in high school, and after reading some plays by Samuel Beckett, I thought ‘I’d really like to do that, write plays like him.’” Thus far his plays have been some of the favorites from years past.
The other plays were “Asylum Confidential”, about a deranged mental patient who thought his lover had been overmedicated to death; “[Sic]” about a Hampton Roads newspaper run by an editor frustrated with her uncooperative and incompetent writers, who comically failed to get any good information on the “Bay City Strangler;” “Common Area: a Fun Act,” a hilarious play about a botched surprise party at a frat house à la The Hangover; and “B. Park,” about a writer working at a grocery store set up on a blind date with a girl in a tourist-infested park by his overbearing, intellectual older sister. Other than "Didn't Love It," they all focused on big laughs, and mostly delivered (especially “Common Area”). It was a great night and I’m glad I went, and I seriously encourage anyone even remotely interested in theatre to get involved next year.