15th annual 24-hour play festival!

I'm glad this thing keeps persevering, though it makes it hard for folks to follow it from year to year when it's always somewhere different.

There are a couple of new venues that have sprung up this summer, so maybe that will help these homeless troupes.

Two reps from the national mother ship were in town, so that was nice.

Also, it was held at Asbury Memorial Church, so that was super nice!

My biggest beef was the total lack of a physical program for my $12.

Just for reference, QR code programs are useless without a smart phone.

Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions - we all know how useless and First World-biased those are, right?

The good news is: these five plays were much lighter than last year's!

Hallelujah!!!

Just like last year's production, the plays had no common line or common item; they were totally random, using props the actors owned.

So, one had a ukelele.

That was in "An Alternative Horror", the very last of the five offerings, written by Thomas Houston and featuring his lovely wife, Danielle.

She was the assistant of a rich fellow who gets visited by a Were-person - think Were-wolf, but the full moon doesn't change the bitten one into an animal, just a person.

In this case, it was a person who played the ukelele and sang the Harry Nilsson song about limes and coconuts!

I don't know if that was Thomas' choice or that of Malcolm Sturdevant (the actor playing the Were-person), but I ate it up!

In fact the whole short play was quite funny, though inadvertently so.

See, the rich guy was to try to use drawings to explain Were-physiology science, but the easel he was using kept collapsing - hahahaha!

He finally grabbed up the easel and the sketchpad and tossed them off stage to the great delight of all!!!

Oh, and Danielle showed she could be a real bad-ass - I told her she should seek out those kinds of roles!!!

Another had a rubber chicken.

 

That would be the third play, "Something In The Water", written by Rick Garman and directed by Ryan McCurdy.

This was like Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" in reverse.

So, the fast section came first, as the grand-daughter tried to get her grandma packed and out of the house before the dam breaks, with the old lady insisting that wouldn't happen as she kept pulling items out of the bins.

Then it goes into slow mode as the scene shifts to a nursing home, with the nurse interrupting the old woman's reveries to take her to her room... and the nurse kindly agreeing to listen to one of the woman's stories.

It truly was a heartfelt piece.

So, what about the other three plays?

 

The first, "Separation Anxiety", was written by, and starring, Chris Bass.

As I told him, he seemed to be channeling his inner vampire as a backwoods veterinarian called in to help a troubled married couple who'd been hiking, as a bonding experience, and got tripped up.

 

The second play, about a married lesbian couple wanting to find a sperm donor and looking for help from a gay friend, was the least appealing to me.

Titled "The Choice", it didn't feature anyone I knew, wasn't written by anyone I know, and was about wanting a baby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.

Then there was the 4th play, "Metal Bird", which at least had one person I knew.

The thing is, here's the thing (as my ex would have said): the whole play reminded me of that time-filling skit Steve Martin did on SNL decades ago.

So, there Luisa Nolasco was, a wife standing on the edge of the apartment building's roof, with her husband trying in vain to call her back.

Then comes a guy they know and he acquiesces to her repeated talk about the "big metal bird" in the distance. 

Hmm... yeah, okay.

One interesting feature was the same as last year: a musician between plays would sing a tune to keep us busy while the stage was changed out.

This time it was Samantha Stephens, who had a playlist that she strayed from after the third play.

So, here's her choices, including the one change.

 

"Hungry Heart", by Bruce Springsteen in 1980

"True Colors", by Cyndi Lauper in 1986

"I Was Made For You" (maybe by Billie Eilish?)

"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", by Cher in 1966

 

Those were some interesting song choices, made more so as they were mostly from my younger years.

Nice to know they still resonate with 30-somethings!