Preparing for a long night
We arrived at junior Emmet Kowler’s house at around 7 p.m. to witness the beginning of the 24 hour play process. Kowler was a member of a writing group along with juniors Kinzie Wiklander, Kloie Rush-Spratt, and Marissa Heim, and together they wrote a 12 minute one-act in one night.
The writers weren’t given unrestrained freedom while writing their one-act: like every other group, they were assigned lines they must incorporate into the script, a prop to use, and a designated number of actors to write for. They were writing for two male characters and four female, and the lines they had to incorporate were “Is there anything sadder?” “Only drowning puppies. and there would have to be a lot of them.” Their prop – a bloody seagull – further insured that the play would be interesting and, when combined with the lack of sleep, downright hilarious.
The script was born out of a little inspiration and a lot of caffeine. The creativity present in the room felt natural and unforced, and the first solid idea for the script came out of a story of Rush Spratt’s. The writers threw out ideas of how to translate the story into a new setting. They threw out character names: Fontaige, Sally, a Russian translation of “giant light-bulb,” and everything they saw turned into inspiration for the plot.
The four juniors continued to bounce ideas off one another. Someone suggested a teacher who lacks the respect of his students or a leader without power, and someone else wanted to see an exaggeratedly conservative Christian character. After brainstorming for a while, they began writing a rough draft, tossing out ideas as they went. They planned on taking a break soon, after Rush-Spratt stated, “I promised my stomach I would go to the Malt Shop.”
Piecing it all together
The 24 hour plays were run this year by Seniors Lucy Pipkin and Collin Knopp-Schwyn. “It was sort of passed off to me by the senior who ran it last year,” said Pipkin, “I roped Collin in to help me out.” Together, the seniors organized the play-writing groups and other parts of the process partly in person and partly on Facebook. 24 hour plays is an annual fundraiser that has been going on for over a decade, and this year South High Theater (SHT) raised over $450 in donations.
Pipkin is generally behind the scenes of South High Theater working as the props mistress, but 24 hour plays gave her the chance to step up and be at the forefront of the plays. “I felt that this year we’ve really grown as a theater program,” noted Pipkin, “personally, it’s helped me grow as a leader.” Pipkin observed that, compared to other years of 24 hour plays, this year “went a lot smoother.”
But there are always bumps in the road. Even though the plays are traditionally comedies, one group of freshman writers unwittingly wrote a drama. “We didn’t know you weren’t supposed to write dramas,” said freshman Jae Shin Cross, “it’s a thing freshman go through. I’m lucky because the director who took ours took it seriously.”
Freshman Caladonia Wilson, an actor in Shin Cross’s play, stated that “half the play ended up being ad-libbed. It worked out, though.” Forgetting lines is an inevitable part of the process. Usually it works out for the better by adding humor to the play, which made pulling off the drama that much more of a challenge.
In addition to the out of place but well-done drama, some other shows has disadvantages that didn’t turn out quite as well. Sophomore Anneliese Lee-Reid acted in a two person play called “Pirated Pizza.” Having a two person cast posed quite a few problems for the actors, the largest one being the sheer amount of lines to memorize in the short time given. Lee-Reid and her opposite in the play, junior Ryan Wiskerchen, bailed out when the lack of sleep inhibited their improvisation skills to the point of no return.
“For me, I was really tired and I blanked,” explained Lee-Reid, “next year I probably won’t do acting, I’ll just direct.” Fortunately, the atmosphere of 24 hour plays was accepting and comical enough that the abrupt end of “Pirated Pizza” only added to the high spirits.
Freshman Liam McLaughlin also noticed the difficulty of remembering lines when running off of 5 hour energy and spastic impulses. “You have to be really focused all the time, because if you’re not focused, you won’t remember any of your lines, ” said McLaughlin, who participated in 24 Hour Plays for the first time this year working as a writer and an actor. The writing process of his group, he said, was “similar to writing a short story, [but] you need to make sure to write in stage directions.”
McLaughlin’s play “Panty Raid” sprang to life while “walking to Mike Kocken’s house and we got onto the topic of stealing stuff, then it turned into nerds wanting to get into a fraternity.” The play resulted with actors Knopp-Schwyn and Senior Aeon Bollig all dolled up in dresses, and the audience roaring with laughter.
“Panty Raid” had a manic energy that kept the play funny, and engaged the audience in a way that was less polished than a big production but somehow just as rewarding. Sophomore Grace Chadwick noticed other discrepancies between a large production and 24 hour plays, stating that in addition to the thrown-together effect of the plays, “you don’t have as many props to work with. You have to use your body more than relying on objects.”
“24 hour plays is a lot funnier and a bonding experience for actors,” said Chadwick, adding that there’s always the point where being tired becomes less of a hindrance and more of a “mix between panicking and laughing.”
The final product
The next day we hopped in the car and made our way to Christ Church Lutheran excited to see what had become of our sleep deprived peers. As we walked into the basement, a mound of clothing, electronics and coke caught our eyes. Evidence of human life.
We rounded the corner and were met by dozens of sleepy teens looking as if some unseen force was keeping awake against their wills. “I’m running off of two hours of sleep and ten Pop-tarts,” yelled one actor.
We wandered out of the room full of loopy kids and made our way into the gym, where junior Cedar Weyker was directing Kowler’s play “Ranch” from the bottom of the stage. She watches as the actors try the lines on for size. The script has been revised, the necessary lines implanted, the props written into the show. At this point, it only vaguely resembles Rush-Spratt’s story, and as the rehearsal goes on, there is improvisation from the bone-tired actors, and it becomes more and more apparent that the writers were not in a good state of mind when they wrote it.
Rehearsals drift through rooms, actors crack up as they miss monologues and talk to invisible characters. Senior Rose Hamill gives us an idea of what’s gone down since our last check-in. “We’ve run into standard 24 hour play problems: actors who didn’t think they were acting, not having enough scripts, getting parental permission for everything,” she told us.
“A lot have parents have asked, ‘Who’s in your group, will there be supervision,’” said Hamill, adding that plenty of parents, mostly of freshman and sophomores “don’t want their kids to be involved in co-ed sleepovers.”
We approached Rush-Spratt and asked how she was feeling, to which she responded in a disgruntled tone, “Horrible.” We found our pal Bollig face-down on a couch, looking like he wanted to die. This attitude was a common theme all over the church. Actors oscillated between jubilation and heavy lethargy. This was our cue to leave and return in a few hours, when the shows are ready.
Watching the shows, it felt as if we were the ones who hadn’t slept in 24 hours. The hilarity increased as actors forgot their lines and accompanied the resulting improvisations with adrenaline-fueled gestures. “Ranch” was even more ridiculous than we had anticipated, as were all the shows, apart from the well-executed drama.
What struck us the most was the boundless lack of fear of messing up apparent in SHT kids. They realize that failures are just going to make the whole experience more enjoyable. It’s something that most people don’t strive for, but not being afraid to screw up is what makes this group of kids different. That, and choosing to survive on the brink of crashing from over-caffeination for over 24 hours straight. In the words of co-organizer Knopp-Schwyn: “Sleep. We all love it, but you can’t do it until you’re done.”