The theater nerds at DePauw do a pretty cool project called Insomniac theater. The idea is simple. Actors, Writers, and Directors all meet Friday evening at 7:00. Actors auditions and writers select them. Then, the actors and directors go to sleep. Meanwhile the writers stay up all night and they each deliver a 10 minute play by 7am. From there the directors and actors meet and get the play memorized, blocked out, and ready to be performed. The performance takes place at 7:30 Saturday night (24 hours after it "began").
Last year I was an actor. This year, I wrote and directed my own play. Basically, that means I got even less sleep.
The writers had three rules to follow: There must be a character named Flip Spiceland, Toilet Paper must be used as a prop, and the line of dialogue "Do you have to do that now" appears.
Sadly, my camera died before my play could get recorded (it went last), but click here to download and read the play. It got changed a bit while we rehearsed and worked out a lot of the dialogue kinks, but there was nothing major changed.
You may notice "magnificent" is spelled wrong in the title page. I added that at the last minute at 4am, and I am leaving it in there as a mark of the play's rapidly-written nature.
An interesting thing about writing a play in one sitting overnight is that you don't get any perspective. You have nobody to tell you if the whole is offensive, irrelevant, wordy, strange, or just plain stupid. That's what made these plays so great. One of the other writers wrote a play about a secretly gay husband, which was very funny - but some people were offended. All of the plays were very different and they all were insane. They also all were comedies! Insomniac theater is a fantastic project, and we had a great time doing it.
Click here to download a pdf of the play
For those curious, I wrote in Google Docs with Fountain.io, and then a bit in vim, and finally in adobe story
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