Play in a Day

Having a bad day. My truck was rear ended and the guy said he had to run because he was picking someone up at the airport, so there was no police report. I looked at my cell phone only to find the battery dead. We did exchange insurance info. People need to slow down and relax. A friend sketched a peace sign into the dirt on the back of my truck. When I got home after the accident I rubbed it out thinking it might have been a bulls eye for the road raged Daytona driver that hit me.
Play in a day is hosted by Beth Marshall at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater. Six groups of Orlando’s most talented actors and playwrights had just 24 hours to put together their consecutive plays. Writers were given a theme and certain ideas that had to be in the play. They then wrote late into the night some of them all night long for the production starting the next day.
When I arrived Beth Marshall was directing a musical political satire written by Margot Knight. Margot explained her process a bit and it was fascination. She had a long list of free associated ideas that she jotted down in quick succession. No ideas were rejected and many ended up in the final production. She said she even was writing as she drove which is a practice I have started following her example. The fact that I had a fender bender this morning is an entirely unrelated event. I was rear ended and I wasn’t writing at the time. Margot’s production was a fun romp about health care reform. The political quagmire was best represented by using Alice in Wonderland as the vehicle to start the production. At one point Alice tries to read the legal document of the health care reform bill and she is rightfully confused by the language where up is down and down is up.
Britni Leslie had the lead roll as Alice. She had several song numbers to sing and Beth was concerned that her voice might not carry well enough in the theater. Beth arranged to get a wireless mic. The rehearsal was fast and furious with tech setting up lights and sound cues on the fly. I am amazed as how the actors could retain so much dialogue so fast. When it came time to present the play in front of an audience, I felt it went rather well. watching rehearsals I knew where a few blunders and slip ups had happened, but when there was an audience the adrenaline and focus kicked in making everything flow smoothly.