shakespearemom

Unlike many other writers I know, I simply love rules. Nothing sparks my creativity more than dealing with limitations placed upon what I’m doing. For instance, I’ve written several times for a 24-hour play festival. It is chock full of limitations. Here’s the deal:

Six directors, six playwrights, a ton of actors and many techies show up at 8 p.m. on a Friday night. Each one brings one costume and one prop, and each one gets onstage and introduces himself/herself, explains the costume and prop, and the actors tell us if they have any special talents, like speaking a foreign language, accents, screaming abilities, etc. Once everyone has gone onstage, the actors, directors, and techies go home to sleep as much as they can. And that is when the writers get to work (that’s me). They “cast” their plays with actors first using a draft system (we are ordered in rank, and we take turns picking from the pool of actors until the entire group is cast). And then we have from about midnight to 6 a.m. to write a play using those actors.

What’s cool about it is that I have no idea until my cast is cast what I can even write…and I’ve found, in both instances I participated, that the cast inspired me. I knew many of the actors, knew what they were capable of, or knew their talent based upon what they said. Plus, I had to incorporate many of the props and costumes everyone brought (in fact, sometimes every play used a certain prop, and we had to grab it from show to show during performance).

Once the writers finish their script, they get to go home to bed (and sleep all day). In the meantime, the six scripts are copied, and the directors meet at 7 a.m. to read all the plays, ranking them by preference (during one 24-hour play festival, I found out that 5 of 6 directors ranked mine first!). They are usually matched with one of their preferred plays, and the actors return at 8 a.m. to find out what play they are in and begin rehearsing. They (the directors, actors, and techies) have until 8 p.m. that night to memorize lines and blocking, find costumes, and practice so they can perform for a live audience exactly 24 hours from the time they began work on all of this.

It’s a marathon, believe me, but it has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I only wish I knew of one here in Seattle, one I could get involved with it.

Funny, though, I’ve heard the only plays that go significantly astray (that suck, as some have said) are the ones which were already formulated before the playwrights came the first night. Afraid they’ll come up with nothing because they only have a few hours, they come with a fixed plan for their play, and then they look only for elements which fit into the established plan. What results (I have been told) is a stale play which doesn’t take advantage of any actor’s idiosyncracies, that uses none of the prop ideas, that is bland.

Yet, if the writer had allowed the elements to inspire him, instead of limiting himself by sticking to an established idea, he could have come up with something brilliant.

I discovered, through this exercise, that working with outside limits (rhyme schemes, etc.) is far easier than working under limitations within, limitations which we impose upon ourselves because we feel incapable of doing something brilliant in a pinch.

I know which ones I prefer. Which limitations would you rather have?

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