So this festival has been running and growing in Seattle since 1998, and now a few of its company members have brought it to Austin, and I’m gonna be doing it in a couple of weeks. It starts the night of October 15th and ends with a bang on Saturday, October 17th.
http://the1448projects.org/about/
This is one of those things that sounds too insane to do (stay up all night long for two straight nights writing two different plays), but I’m excited to try it at least once. (I think.)
Here’s a bit about it from the organizers:
“What makes 14/48 different than other types of theater festivals is the emphasis on community building,” said Noah Martin, the festival’s producer. “We gather the most adventurous artists from all over Austin—from improv to traditional theatre to performance art—and lock them in a theatre for two days with lots of beer. When the festival is over, you see all of these new relationships made, which yield new projects that would never have happened otherwise.”
The format of the festival also yields two nights of wild, unexpected live performance. During 14/48, seven world-premiere plays are written, cast, directed, rehearsed, scored, designed and performed twice in 24 hours. The entire process is then repeated the next day with seven new plays. Participants and audience members have the opportunity to complete the sentence: “I want to see seven ten-minute plays about _____.” One answer per night is chosen at random, and the writers spend the night crafting a play based on that theme. In the morning, directors choose scripts and casts at random. The band writes original music based on the theme, and designers build sets and find costumes.
Audiences last year saw plays on everything from dolphin sex to virgin sacrifice to a romance between Tetris pieces… The Steering Committee is nearly finished putting together the 2015 roster. Those artists include the seven writers: Max Langert, Brian Oglesby, Travis Tate, Sarah Loucks, Greg Klein, Megan Tabaque, and Taya Kitasky.
Man, no one even told me about the beer when I signed up! All right, bring it on. Who needs sleep anyway, right?
