24 hour plays
Tina Fallon
“By 10 o’clock on the night of Jan. 22, 47 people had gathered at the Chopin Theater in Chicago. A fireman, a lawyer, a journalist and a candy store clerk were among them. Each had brought a prop and costume, knowing that in less than 24 hours he would be performing before an audience that had paid $10 apiece to see theater. The plays had yet to be written” – Chicago Reader
“By 10 o’clock on the night of Jan. 22, 47 people had gathered at the Chopin Theater in Chicago. A fireman, a lawyer, a journalist and a candy store clerk were among them. Each had brought a prop and costume, knowing that in less than 24 hours he would be performing before an audience that had paid $10 apiece to see theater. Some of those present had never been on a stage before. No one had learned his lines. No one knew what part he was to play. As a matter of fact, none of the roles had been created. The plays had yet to be written.
No, this wasn’t Ionesco or a nightmare. It was preparation for what are called “The 24-Hour Plays.” Actually, it takes 24 hours to create, cast and rehearse them; performances last 90 minutes or so. The Chicago event was presented by Tina Fallon, a freelance production manager who has worked at Primary Stages in New York. She will be presenting another such evening on Saturday at the Ohio Theater in SoHo in Manhattan. It happens like this: About 50 people, some of whom are either writers or work in movies or theater, gather the night before a performance, each with a prop and a costume as inspiration for the writers. They have their pictures taken. The actors and directors Ms. Fallon has chosen then go home. The six people who will write the plays — ranging from slapstick comedies to introspective dramas — stay up all night to complete one 10-minute play each, roughly 12-pages. At 6 o’clock the next morning, the actors and directors return. The scripts are photocopied. Each director then votes for the three plays he would most like to direct and Ms. Fallon tries to oblige with at least one play. The roles are also cast by Ms. Fallon, who describes the process as akin to “trading baseball cards.” “You put the Polaroids of the writer, the director and the actors for each play in a pile,” she said. “If someone really wanted an actor they didn’t get, we trade.” The writers are then sent home, and rehearsals begin. There are rules: no improvisations, actors must stick to the script, and every play must be performed, no matter how bad. Actors cast in several plays have a major speaking part in only one. Each group then gets a 15-minute technical rehearsal onstage. And, Ms. Fallon said, “There is no such thing as five more minutes.” Of course, actors do forget their lines. “Sometimes, the actors resort to improv, which I don’t encourage,” Ms. Fallon said. “But it’s O.K. as a short-term solution to forgetting lines. They also ask for cues. When an actor calls for a line, the audience is right there with them and offers up some dialogue.” The result is part theater, part workshop, with a few laughs (even if they are unintentional), a few surprises and always, it seems, at least one nugget of talent, whether comedic gimmick, choreographed dance step, spate of ex+K36cellent dialogue or moment of superior acting. Drama and suspense seem to be inherent in the concept, Ms. Fallon said. The audience becomes involved, almost like a chorus, because it knows that some participants have never been on the stage and have pulled the whole thing together in a day and a night. The effect is a kind of play within a play, only half of which is seen onstage — the process becoming as much a part of the production as the performances. Ms. Fallon, 30, a native of Fairport in upstate New York, moved to Manhattan to attend Eugene Lang College, part of the New School, in 1987, where she has since taught a 24-hour-play workshop. She got the idea from her interest in sudden fiction — stories as short as a single page — and 24-hour comics, usually 24-page comics written and drawn in 24 hours, a notion she borrowed from Scott McCloud, a creator of comics. Since her first production in 1995, Ms. Fallon has put on 24-hour plays at, among other places, the Present Company Theatorium on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Ohio Theater. MS. FALLON rarely knows when or where a round of 24-hour plays will be performed until the last minute. Then she digs into her e-mail file of interested parties and rallies a cast and crew and even an audience. The Chicago evening, using local talent and the help of a co-producer, Susan Stahl, was the first time Ms. Fallon had tried the concept outside New York. She generally produces two separate rounds every year. Eventually, she said, she wants to tour with 24-hour plays full time. She would also like to introduce the idea to schools. In 1997, “The 24-Hour Plays” ran around the clock for 10 days in a row (“The 240-Hour Plays”) at the New York International Fringe Festival and 53 new plays were created in 10 days. Last year, “The 24-Hour Plays” had a monthly spot at the Present Company Theatorium on Stanton Street. “It was too much,” recalled Ms. Fallon. “The emotional energy to produce one of these is huge. And the physical energy it takes to consistently miss at least one night’s sleep nearly put me over the edge. According to Nicolas Locke, an interior and set designer who acted in “The 24-Hour Plays” a few years ago, “You never get the sense that the person onstage is saying, ‘O.K., I’m a professional actor and I’m going to do the same thing I have done a hundred times before because that’s the way the blue-haired ladies love it.’ ” Valerie Stanford, an actress who appeared in a 24-hour play last October at the Ohio, agreed: “Playwrights who aren’t playwrights have a fresher perspective. They’re just writing what they think is funny, not what they’ve learned from experience that people will think is funny.” According to Ms. Fallon: “Part of the fun of this is that something will go wrong. But great theater happens, too. It gives me a chance to get new work out there, to find new talent. And it gives them a chance to experiment.” For her, 24-hour plays “eliminate everything I don’t like about theater.” “There is no diva egotism,” Ms. Fallon said, “no agonizing over big psychological motivation issues. There’s simply no time for it.” New York Times 2000“At some point, everyone going through this is going to hate it,” Tina Fallon admits with a laugh. “They’re going to feel awful, they’re going to hate everyone. But that passes.” She’s describing The 24-Hour Plays, a theatrical ordeal as revelatory as it is insane–Fallon brings playwrights, actors, directors, designers, and producers into a theater and gives them one day to create a one-act play festival from scratch.
Fallon dreamed up the event in New York five years ago and has staged it in various venues there. At the 1997 New York International Fringe Festival, she presented The 240-Hour Plays, stretching out the process for ten straight days. This weekend marks the show’s first incarnation in Chicago. Two weeks ago Fallon and Susan Stahl, a friend in Chicago who’s coproducing the event, started making calls and sending E-mails in search of 50 people to participate. At 10 PM this Saturday, those who’ve signed on will assemble in the Chopin Theatre. Each is supposed to bring a costume piece and a prop. “We ask people to bring both, but they usually forget one or the other,” Fallon says. After everyone is introduced, briefed, and captured on Polaroid, the lid on the pressure cooker slams shut. The six writers are sequestered at 11 PM; they each have until 6 AM to come up with a ten-minute play. Fallon urges them to start from ground zero, rather than developing ideas they may have brought with them. “One of the reasons we all come together like this is to blow preconceptions out of our minds,” she explains. “If the writer walks in thinking about a scene between a blond bombshell and a 70-year-old man, and there’s no blond bombshell among the actors, he’s going nowhere. “I would say there have been one or two plays from the hundreds we’ve created that clearly had been researched ahead of time. They lacked all spontaneity. They were no fun at all.” At six the writers are sent home. “The last thing you need in rehearsal is a playwright who’s been up all night fretting over the fact that an actor hasn’t memorized the lines of a play he’s had for three hours,” says Fallon. An hour later the directors arrive, read through the scripts, from which the playwrights’ names have been removed, and vote for three they would like to direct. “Usually directors get one of their three choices,” Fallon says, “but sometimes you’re stuck directing a play you hate. It’s the same thing with actors. You may get one line, you may get a three-page monologue. We explain that at the beginning of the event: ‘If it’s important to you to get a good part, then you should go home now.’” Once they’ve been assigned their scripts, the directors cast their plays using the Polaroids the actors left behind. At 9 AM the actors show up and rehearse until 5. The set, lights, and sound are worked out until 7:30. At 7:45 the doors open to the public, and at 8 the show must go on. “The plays are never ready during rehearsal, not during tech either,” Fallon says. “Everything happens at the last minute. “There are always a few crappy plays, but no matter what, the audience is with you. It’s one of the few times that an audience knows exactly what went into the making of theater, so they don’t resent that it’s not Broadway. They’re rooting for you. And there is always one play that is as good as any play you’ve ever read.” Fallon, who lives in New York, makes her living cobbling together jobs in film and theater, mostly as a producer or production manager. “I take the work that comes,” she says with a sigh. The 24-Hour Plays is a labor of love. “As an activity, it’s my favorite thing to do.” She got the idea after reading about artist Scott McCloud, who writes and illustrates comic books in 24 hours. “It seemed like a great method in the theater,” she says, “a way to break through people’s bullshit and get down to hard work. “It’s amazing to see people who haven’t even met before give so much of themselves in a real heroic way. There is no ego–people get over themselves pretty quick. It’s the best way I know to bring out the best in people. “And you know, I go to all these new play festivals at big theaters where everybody tinkers over the plays for six weeks, and usually it’s pretty dull. I say either spend six months and really finish something, or get it done in a day.” Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader January 21, 2000