The Play’s the Thing, and Done in a Day: Parish Players Presents
“One Night Only!”
On this Friday evening if you stand outside the Parish Players theater in Thetford, Vermont, you could hear the serious clacking of multiple laptop keyboards. Or maybe you would sense the utter stillness of fingers hovering just over the keys, awaiting a creative spark.
You’ve heard of the 10-minute play festival perhaps, but this is not that. A completely new 24-hour theater festival is coming to Thetford, VT this weekend (September 22-23). During the One Night Only! festival at Parish Players community theater, four new one act plays will be written and and produced in just 24 hours.
The festival begins at 7:00 pm on Friday, September 22 when the writers get their prompts. Work continues until 7:00 pm on Saturday, September 23 when the curtain goes up and the finished plays will be performed for a live audience.
It was Rachael Thomeer’s idea. “I participated in a few 24-hour play festivals in college as an actor and I found them to be fun and community-building experiences. This past winter, I was part of the TENS festival at Parish Players (their annual 10-minute play festival). . . . That experience reminded me of the 24-hour play festivals I did in college and inspired me to pitch a 24-hour play festival to Parish Players.”
Why the need for speed? Rachael describes it as:
“a challenging game, but a winnable one. It feels great to accomplish something new like this in such a short span of time . . . This creative team project under a deadline yields some new and out-of-the box ideas that you don't always see in traditional theater settings.”
The condensed format also provides theater opportunities for people in the UV who don’t have the ability to commit to months of rehearsals and weeks of performances. Over 30 participants from across the Upper Valley have registered to act, write, direct, usher, or do theater tech at the festival.
The plays will be fully created in just 24 hours, but the festival producers started working a few months ago to recruit participants, build a schedule, figure out lighting and props, promote the festival, sell tickets, figure out logistics, and more. The production team includes Emily Counts, Beata Randall, Molly Raposa, and Rachael Thomeer, with the support of the Parish Players board.
The plan is to make this an annual event. You can contribute to the effort by taking your artful self and a friend or two to the performances on Saturday. Tickets are available here.
(Photo, top, via Pixabay. Other photos courtesy of One Night Only!/Rachael Thomeer)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.