Relaxed.
That is the word that director Grant Freeman used to describe this year’s 24-hour play festival in Lisbon.
“One of the lessons we learned last year is the importance of not having as much in my hands as the director on announcing these plays and transitions,” Freeman said. “By streamlining a lot more and giving that off to students and allowing this to truly focus on students and their endeavors, it made this much more successful and professional.”
Like in 2022, students were given a character, a prop, a movie quote and a setting to start the one act play they had to create. For writers, their time started at 7 p.m. Friday evening, and concluded at roughly 6 a.m. in the morning, when scripts were due to Freeman. Freeman also had additional scripts either pre-written from years prior, ready to go for actors and directors if there became an issue with one of the plays.
At roughly 8 a.m. Saturday morning, actors and directors received the scripts and worked on blocking and memorizing lines for the productions, with a 6:30 p.m. doors open and 7 p.m. curtain time for the production.
Characters in this year’s plays included Batman, James Bond, Jedis and Buzz Lightyear. A total of nine directors, eight writers and roughly 21 actors participated in the second annual festival, with representation from Cedar Rapids Prairie, Lisbon, Mount Vernon and North Cedar Schools.
Another element that director Freeman was excited about this year was first time writers getting a chance to debut plays at the festival. This year, that was eighth grader Isavella LeClere of Lisbon and Carly Steen of Mount Vernon.
“We wanted this to be an encouraging space for first time writers to try out their one act plays,” Freeman said.
Writer Grant Tucker from Mount Vernon spent the night of his birthday working on his one act play, “To the Mark Mobile.”
Tucker packed the play, focusing on the line “You’re going to need a bigger boat” with references to many films and pop culture references.
“It’s very easy to get ideas just out of my head and into the page,” Tucker said.
Tucker said he knew the festival would be landing just about his birthday, and so was looking forward to the festival and writing for this for the second year.
“It’s just so much fun to see all of these one act plays that were created in the same 24 hour period,” Tucker said.
Writer Willa Turner was commenting to her cast for the one-act play “Dorothy Gale: The General of Oz” how they wrote the play on roughly two hours of sleep, and was still buzzing when they were in attendance to see the play performed. Turner noted that they liked many of the choices actors had made to bring to life the play, and the actors during intermission had commented how much fun they had with elements of the script, like the line dealing with a character’s allergies to DNA.
Xavier Kirton, who played Dorothy Gale in that one act, said their favorite part of the production was seeing all the other productions written by people their age.
“I also liked working with students from other schools,” Kirton said.
The challenge for the actor was the number of lines to memorize in a short period of time.
Holley Dighton from Lisbon was Dracula in the play “To the Mark Mobile.”
“Just the ability to meet and work with other students from other schools was my favorite part of this experience,” Dighton said. “As a small school like Lisbon, we don’t get these opportunities every day.”
Lisbon’s Alli Silver was approached about running sound a few days before the festival.
“A lot of the technical work in something like this was really listening and paying attention to make sure I was hearing the cues or microphones were on for actors,” Silver said. “It’s a lot more hectic than our usual plays, but still a lot of fun.”
Lisbon 24 hour play festival returns
December 14, 2023
About the Contributor
Nathan Countryman, Editor
Nathan Countryman is the Editor of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun.