Making theater requires a lot of planning. In fact, it takes about five years to produce the average opera. Imagine only having 24 hours to write, compose, cast, direct, rehearse, and perform a show! In the documentary One Night Stand, which premiered last week at Newfest, filmmakers Elisabeth Sperling and Trish Dalton provide a behind-the-scenes view of the annual fundraising event, The 24 Hour Plays.
During the festival, which has taken place in late winter or early spring for the past four years, volunteer writers, composers, directors and performers are put into groups and produce four separate twenty minute plays within the span of a day. And you thought your job was stressful!
Rising to the occasion, most of the featured working professionals, who participated at the event in 2009, including Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, 30 Rock's Cheyenne Jackson, and Saturday Night Live's Rachel Dratch, had never worked on such a tight deadline and anticipated the worst of their showcase. "Fear becomes your motivation," explained actress Capathia Jenkins. Adding to the suspense, Sperling and Dalton track the progress of each musical with a timeline. In this spirit, the filmmakers also made a separate five minute documentary, five minutes in twenty two hours, which has yet to be released, according to the actor participant Richard Kind.
Cameras, set-up by the pair, did not seem to faze the members involved in the festival. At the premiere screening, Kind admitted he had no idea that the documentary was being made. “They film everything these days!” he said. In order to capture what went on that night, Sperling, accumulating sixty-five hours of footage over the day, set up one camera for each of the four plays, plus one to three roaming cameras. At one point, ten cameras were going at one time. Still, no one seemed to notice. Said Sperling: “When you are under the pressure of the task at hand, the cameras are the last thing on your mind.”
Condensing their creative process into twenty-four hours, participants' skill-set was tested as they are taken out of their comfort zones. Even though Dratch, for example, wins over the crowd as the lead in “Rachel Said Sorry,” a musical about a woman who pleads forgiveness after making some drunken remarks at a friend's wedding, Dratch's face, throughout the film, reads ambivalence. Having no experience working in a musical and surrounded by vocal veterans, Tracie Thoms from Rent and Mandy Gonzalez from Wicked, the comic chameleon had a hard time easing her nerves before showtime: “There is a reason why I do improv,” said Dratch.
While memorization seemed to be the toughest part for the actors, writers were forced to omit editing out their writing processes. Still, the plays seemed to miraculously come together at the end of the day. A most entertaining part of the movie occurs when the actors, Ferguson and Jackson, scramble to remember lines in “Dr. Williams,” a satirical medical melodrama written and rehearsed in 7 hours. According to experts, in order to produce a successful 24-hour show, perfectionism must be left at the door.
“It takes out all the fun when the actors try to bring scripts on stage,” musical director Ted Sperling said. Also, involved in RIPfest, a collaborative two-week filmmaking project, Sperling is no stranger to strict time constraints in his art. “These deadlines force you to get a job done. No excuses.” he said. As nerve racking as the process may be, many participants expressed how much they enjoyed being involved in the festival. Kind said, “When you are under such a tight deadline, you don't have much time to rehearse. As an actor, you loose your sense of control. It's like a rollercoaster. You want to throw up, but it's fun!”
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