A team of writers gathered as the countdown began at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday evening. Over the next 24 hours, they worked together to conceptualize, write, produce and perform a 15-minute play based on their assigned themes of “space” and “Earth.”
The festival was a challenge that encouraged participants to actively problem solve and grow their artistic skills together. Writers, directors and actors all worked together, many of them wearing multiple hats, to bring to life a completely new play. “As soon as you felt like you hit a wall, there was somebody else there that could come in and say, ‘I got this. I have fresh eyes,’” Andrew Szakmeister said about the collaboration process on this project that had such a quick turnaround. Other members included Kirsten Klaren, Aidan Dahia and Connor Webb.
At 7:00 p.m. on Sunday evening, the doors of Studio 115 opened to a dark black box theater where the new work, “Us the Mortals,” took place.
The process
“We stumbled haphazardly into this ‘bringing ideas to life’ idea that’s central to Greek and Roman mythology — the creation of a character from a separate concept with a bit of a personality,” Szakmeister said. Their play personified the concepts of fate, time and space. The three writers worked on separate scenes independently. If one writer hit a roadblock, they would take a break to edit their teammates’ work. They traded ideas on a group call until the early hours of the morning.
“Ten minutes before we left night one, we were like, ‘we should make a plot,’ and so we have this god-awful timeline that ended up getting almost completely scrapped by the time we got to this final version,” Szakmeister said. The team of writers kept working on the script the next morning. They continued to overhaul the script again and again.
“We did a read through and realized that we had a lot to change, and that most of what we needed to change were the interactions between [the characters] Fate, Time and Space,” Klaren said. “We didn’t do much rehearsing until after the script was redone … [which left] about an hour and a half to rehearse before we opened.”
The lights came up on a minimalist set that consisted of a few acting blocks and two moving staircases. The actors entered and performed their play entitled “Us the Mortals.” Fate, Time and Space helped tell the story and influence human characters on Earth who were trying to reach space. Throughout the play, the characters explored themes of mortality, ambition and how innovation can cost people their relationships.
The experience
Patchwork Theatre Company is an inclusive club that welcomes all people to participate in its events. “I’m majoring in computer science with a minor in theater, so I really enjoy doing things that are inclusive to all majors and all people,” Dahia said. Webb wasn’t a student but learned about the opportunity on a Facebook group where Patchwork Theater Company posted. “Making these [playwriting] communities is important,” Webb said. He decided to step out of his comfort zone to participate.
“It’s a very creative challenge. There’s not a lot of ways to flex writing muscles, acting skills and table work,” Szakmeister said. The process of collaborating on a 24-hour play was a unique and rewarding experience for many participants. “If you had told me this morning that we were going to rewrite almost the entire script and then also still have time to block the whole thing and do all the technical stuff with the stairs and the blocks and the lights that we ended up putting in, I would not have believed that,” Dahia said. Klaren commented that she enjoyed writing again with others who were “passionate or knowledgeable about a subject.”
Find out more about Patchwork Theatre Company at their website here.
