I participated in The 21 Hour Theatre Festival over the weekend at the Wings Theatre in New York City. A very cool event. How it worked was Friday night, myself and the other writers met with the show's Producer, who randomly distributed our topics. This year the theme was the paranormal and my topic which I was to cover in my piece was ghosts. In addition, we were tasked to include an animal and a specific line of dialogue in our one acts, which were to be turned in the following morning, Saturday, so that the director could get to work rehearing with the actors. All six plays were performed that same day at 5pm and 7pm.
Overall, I found this type of project very challenging to participate in as a writer. You're really put on the spot to come up with something on the fly. It's one of the most difficult ways in which to write as typically -at least in my case- a writer cannot force an idea into being. It sorta has to come to you out of an inspiration. In my experience it's usually behavior I see, hear about or, most preferred, something that happens to me directly. To put a time limit on the process, I found to be a real challenge.
For more information about this project, check out the official site for here: Phare Play Productions. In a future blog I will upload the video of my play performance entitled, Black Out Baby. Although my piece didn't win any awards, I had a talented director and cast that got plenty of laughs.
