Monday, September 13, 2010

Let The Festival Begin!

My revision deadline is quickly approaching and although I'm almost on target to meet it, I think I'll end up overshooting it by a week. Which isn't so bad, I guess. Only a couple of chapters to revise, add a couple of scenes, revisit the prologue and voila...done!

So what will I be doing this coming weekend in view of this looming deadline? I'll be spending all night on Saturday participating in the annual 24-Hour Play Festival at the university where I teach. I've taken part for four years running, so it's practically tradition. I can't possibly not participate!

How does this work, you ask? Well, on Saturday evening all writers, directors, and actors meet and greet, and present their prop and costume items. Then the actors and directors leave to go home and sleep in their cozy beds while the writers have the next 7 to 9  hours to write a (preferably coherent) 10-minute play using the actors who are assigned to them and as many of the props and costume pieces as possible. In the morning, after the plays are written, the bleary-eyed writers go home and sleep and the actors and directors show up to begin rehearsing. Then Sunday evening it all comes together for performance!

It's an amazing creative experience and I look forward to it every year. Of course I'm one of the writers, and actually Hubby is going to write this year too (he's a student at the university). So we'll be sitting down at some point between now and then to brainstorm some possible ideas so we don't go in completely cold on Saturday. I've done that a couple of years and the results are not pretty.  It pays to at least have a couple of ideas on the back burner.

So anybody have any story suggestions? Anything clever? Funny? Dramatic? Anything interesting theatrically?

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