Ah 14/48: the World’s Quickest Theatre Festival! Always a fun time. Only briefly mentioned in On the List last week (shame on us!) weekend two of the 2010 summer edition of the biannual event is cruising along.
If you don’t know what 14/48, here’s the rough break-down: last night, seven playwrights were each given a theme chosen (if I recall correctly) from a random drawing based on audience suggestions from last week. They stayed up all night writing a short play, which was delivered to their director this morning.
All day the director has been rehearsing the show with the cast while the designers rush around like madmen trying to put together a production that goes up tonight at 8 p.m. at Theatre off Jackson. Got that? A play written, rehearsed, and put onstage in 24 hours. And the kicker? In the downtime between the two shows tonight (the second’s at 10:30 p.m.), the same seven playwrights get another random topic, slough off to the bar (to seek the muse at the bottom of the class) or the coffeeshop (to hop the pegasus with an aneurysm-inducingly strong Americano), and start all over again for tomorrow night’s shows.
It’s an awesome, incredible, boozy time featuring the gamut of Seattle’s theatre community, with an emphasis on 14/48 “virgins” (I don’t recall what percent of the invite only participants are first-timers each festival), including, in a blogger role, Seattlest’s own (and friend-of-the-site) Amy Mikel, who’s trying to keep up on the madness along with Chris Bell, Kimberly Coffin, Troy Fischnaller, Mik Kuhlman, and MJ Sieber.