Contemporary Theater writes, rehearses and stages a full performance in 24 hours
SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — This is what pure artistry looks like.
At 11 p.m. Friday, six writers are handed instructions for a play they must write. None has seen the document until now. The Contemporary Theater Company’s 13th annual do-everything-in-24-hours production is underway.
At 6 a.m. Saturday, the writers complete a rough draft of the script.
A half hour later, the final draft is done.
At 7 a.m., the directors — yes, plural — get the script.
At 9 a.m., the cast and crew arrive. Acting and tech rehearsals begin, and continue through the morning and afternoon, in the main theater and a nearby building.
At 8 p.m., the curtain rises.
And when it lowers, applause from what is typically a sellout crowd — and a feeling that artistic director Christopher Simpson described as something beyond adrenaline.
“Very pure. A day when you just get to be your artist self,” Simpson said when The Journal dropped by mid-afternoon Saturday, rehearsals in full, spirited, swing. It was, if you’ll forgive the pun, a beehive of activity: this year’s play was titled “Queen Bee.”
Simpson wrote the starting dossier with the company’s Ashley Macamaux, and it was a three-page document that surely intrigued the writers, even as they faced a night without sleep.
“Choose three realities for your play,” the dossier read.
Choices included “Everything is terrible all the goddamn time,” “Everyone in your play has the same job,” “Something completely inconsequential for us is terrifyingly dangerous to the characters in this play,” and “People aren’t born. People are constructed.”
Twelve female actors and 11 male already had been selected — though until 9 a.m., they knew not for what. The writers were required to follow several prompts for them, including “a character dies or transubstantiates, and is revered in all chronologically subsequent scene(s).”
Imagine reading that at 3 a.m., which is when the writers were allowed to open the prompt envelope.
Actually, that is just the sort of artistry that brings most of the writers and everyone else back year after year, said Simpson, who noted that the annual event serves as a reunion for many who have left the company or Rhode Island. And another shot of unadulterated artistry.
“It’s a chance to get an infinite, impossible series of ideas generated overnight and it has to become practical and immediately become action in so little time,” Simpson said. “There’s not really a lot of second-guessing or doubt or debate, no time for self-censorship. You can’t sit for four hours to try and figure out what’s the right way to end a scene.”
According to Simpson, the approximately total of 50 people who participated this year ranged in age from about 14 to late 60s. “In the past, we’ve had people as old as in their 80s and as young as single digits.”
High school students, a social worker, two flight attendants, two professional artists, an insurance salesman, a percussion instructor, a software engineer, a teacher, an events coordinator and two ministers were included among the cast, crew, writers, directors and technical folks this year, Simpson said.
The artistic director's review?
“A very thrilling event to be part of,” Simpson said.
Also, very fleeting.
“You’re not planning how this will be part of some larger work,” he said. “It has no future life. This is one day, go-go-go, get it done, 50 people, a big crowd, hopefully. It’ll all be magic and we’ll have a party afterwards.”
The company does not record the play. So do not look for the YouTube video.
Said Father W. Brendan Kelley, who is member of the theater crew: “It’s really like a moment, and then off it goes.”