Theater-By-Number: Eight Nervous Breakdowns, Two Stellar Short Plays, & Six Brilliant High School Students.

And fifty-seven pots of coffee, four cornish game hens, twenty-some assorted volunteers, a packed-to-capacity audience, and oh yeah, twenty-four hours. Last night we actually pulled off our 24-Hour Theater event! And not only did we pull it off, it was good! Is that surprising? Not entirely, but, well…it’s a short amount of time to put together a whole lot of show.

For those of you who missed it, we had a bevy of talented and focused writers, actors, directors, set designers, costume designers, gophers, organizers, command-barkers, errand-runners, food-preparers, sign-makers, ticket-takers, and more convene at 826michigan Friday night at 8pm. Twenty-four hours later, two short plays, three skits (written by our Comedic Playwriting workshop participants, aka the 826 Players), and one 10-to-1 playwriting competition went off without a hitch in front of a crowd so big that not only was every seat filled, there were a dozen or so people standing in the back.

 

Five-sixths of the 826 Players—Lauren, Susan, Kaisa,
Haley, and Ruby—act out one of the finalists’
plays in the 10-to-1 playwriting competition.There might be too many people to thank for making this happen. But we must publicly thank Anne Heintz, Onna Solomon, and Rebecca Fried for all their hard work putting this together. Thanks also to all the writers, actors, directors, set designers, costume designers, gophers, organizers, command-barkers, errand-runners, food-preparers, sign-makers, ticket-takers, and more.

 

826michigan intern extraordinaire Jared Hawkley
sort of stole the show as the maid in the murder
mystery The Cat’s Meow.You can see one hundred and eighty-six more pictures of the event http://www.flickr.com/photos/7307350@N02/sets/72157603071913688/. We’ll be doing this again next year, you can count on it! (Sorry. I tried not to do it. I really did. I avoided it, I typed it and then erased it several times, but that bad pun just kept calling me back.)