How To Mount a Play in Two Days - Ideas for Assemblers and Others

So I’m getting all revved and tickled for the upcoming Assembly 2.0 (read up on the Assembly projects here!), for which I am coordinating the acting groups. I think it’s so cool that we’re handing a bunch of people scripts and just saying “Go.” In the past few days I’ve been getting emails from interested folk, asking if they can still participate in the event even if they have work. And I’m like, helLO, we UNderSTAND day-jobs. By no means is the Assembly meant to be an event you’re deeking out of work for.

It’s great if groups want to rehearse full days, but rehearsing the hour before the show is fine too. In short, this art relay is not all about ground-breaking genius. It’s about spinning the wheels, and having fun.

Whilst riding home from the Fringe For All, rather feverishly might I add from a newly-struck sinus infection, I began to think of exciting ways one could create a really innovative piece of theatre with minimal prep time. Cuz essentially, we’ll be handing teams of actors short original scripts, and it’ll be up to them to bring it to some sort of life or uber-life.

Please note that while these ideas are inspired by the upcoming Assembly,
they can apply to any director of a short original script.

1) Record the actors ahead of time doing a read-thru of the script. For the performance, actors do an interpretive dance to the recordings of their own voices, while the accompanying band plays.

2) The cast takes an hour of rehearsal time to disappear into nature and collect stones, twigs, and cool-looking leaves. They return to their rehearsal space, and build a sort of imaginary fairy-castle out of those leaves. They photograph the castle up close from a whole bunch of angles, eventually turning this into a powerpoint slide show. Whatever the script the cast received, it will be set in this magical fairy-kingdom, with the photographs as the back-drop.

3) The cast meets. Purchases kiddy-paint, glue, stick-on googly-eyes, felt and paper bags. Immediately following first read-thru, cast creates puppets for their characters. The performance is a puppet-show.

4) The cast prepares a whole lot of gourmet food in advance. For the performance, the stage is set up as a dinner party. Cast-members invite a few audience members to join them for dinner (audience members willingly participate). They sit down to dinner. At each seat, instead of a menu is a script, and the entire meal (or fifteen-minute course) consists of them reading through the script. At the head of the table is the “director,” who interrupts and tells people to read their lines differently, or adds commentary.

5) Perform the script as a hip-hop opera. If you don’t know how to rap, all the better.

And the list could go on and on and on…

The beauty of theatre - well, there are many beauties of theatre, but here’s one - is that we can literally breathe life into words. It’s one thing to read words on a page, to sense the visceral magic of Shakespeare from the mere sight of printed letters. It’s another thing to embody them. We can be as avant-garde as we like with this sort of thing. That’s why the world needs more spontaneous art relays. With less pressure to produce something of polish, we can focus on producing something of imaginative substance, counting on those frantic first instincts that hit us when we first read a play.

I encourage you to sign up for the assembly.

There’s still time.