A Theatrical Marathon

A good theatrical production doesn’t usually happen overnight—but that doesn’t mean it can’t. For the third year running, Mayfly Playhouse 24 has demonstrated that given 24 hours to write, rehearse and stage a play, seven playwrights, seven directors, and 25 actors can add up to a night of surprisingly entertaining theater.

Presented as part of New London’s Hygienic Art XXXII, the Mayfly Playhouse 24 is the brainchild of former Hygienic gallery manager and longtime theater producer David Foulkes. The premise is as simple as the execution is difficult: Seven playwrights are given one common theme, one prop apiece, and have from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. to write a 10-minute play. Then seven directors and a randomly assigned cast have until the curtain goes up at 8 p.m. the following night to stage it.

“Twenty-four hours ago, tonight did not exist,” said Foulkes, introducing the third annual Mayfly Playhouse’s one-night only performance at the Crocker House in New London on Saturday.

It’s a daunting challenge but playwrights Michael R. McGuire, Laura Natusch, Peter J. Roberts, Anna Maria Trusky, Maureen Crowley, F. Jacob Kaeser, and Heather J. Violanti know what they’re getting themselves into. This is the third year that all of them have been involved.

Although Foulkes never publicly reveals the theme, “midlife crisis” soon emerged as the main idea. This year, however, the playwrights threw each other curve balls by contributing additional thematic ideas that were also drawn at random.  

Kaeser’s play “A Mid-Winter’s Night Tale,” for instance, was based on bad poetry and the dropped “r” as forms of torture, included playing patty cake for pleasure, and incorporated jumper cables as a prop. “Each one of us picked a specific theme–provided by other playwrights–out of a hat,” he says “This ensures no one goes into the production with a preconceived play. You start from scratch.”

That’s no mean feat. “I stayed up all night to write this,” says Kaeser’s wife, Natusch, whose play “Prima Donna’s Nip and Tuck” somehow managed to find humor in both plastic surgery and feminism. “I don’t know if it’s the pressure of the deadline, or the props, or the quirky things we’re given but this festival is stronger than a lot of short festivals where actors and playwrights have all the time in the world.”

On short notice, however, inspiration can come from anywhere. Having recently seen a performance of “Barnum,” actor Keith Eugene Brayne happened to have a clown nose with him when he attended the initial 8 p.m. meeting with playwrights the night before. That led to the creation of his character, a clown going through a midlife crisis, in “The Poland Spring Man Cometh.” It was only by chance that the red nose was still in his pocket when he returned at 8 a.m. for the first read-through.

Then again, everything that happens during this festival is serendipitous. Each playwright picks names from a hat to determine which director they get and the directors do the same to find out which actors they’ll be working with. For the playwrights, it’s a treat to see their words translated so readily into action.

“It’s magic to have actors to make it come alive,” says Crowley, who turned a baseball bat prop into a garden tool, a microphone, and a sword in her play “Hoe Hum.”

For the directors and the cast, however, this production is also very challenging. At 8 a.m., the plays are presented for an initial reading then the directors and the cast have about eight hours to memorize lines, block the action, and rehearse the play.

“It’s a really good exercise in being specific,” says Hygienic Theaterwerks’ Artistic Director Sarah Coleman, who directed Volanti’s The Poland Spring Man Cometh. “You don’t have the luxury of feeling something out. It’s good training for television. They don’t get the script until the day before.”

Although the actors aren’t required to memorize the script, this year everyone did. “There’s a lot of pressure to learn a script in a day,” says Brayne, noting “they’re not quick and easy to memorize.”

“This is my second year and I don’t know why I come back!” says a smiling Erica Strickland, 16, who played “Baby Face” in “Prima Donna’s Nip and Tuck. “I get so stressed--but it’s always so much fun in the end!”

That seems to be what keeps the audience coming back to Mayfly Playhouse 24, too. Attendance has swelled from about 125 the first year to about 225 this year and, by all accounts, the quality of the productions just keeps getting better.

“I thought it went really well,” says Foulkes. “The best year yet out of the three. The characters that the playwrights wrote were very accessible—quirky–but a lot of people here tonight saw themselves or someone they know. And to think this all came together since 8 o'clock this morning!”