Times Union

Berkshires-Capital Region Theatre Project: 51 people, 24 hours, 5 plays and 1 amazing event
By TOM KEYSER Staff writer
Published 12:01 a.m., Friday, April 1, 2011

About 50 professional theater people from the Capital Region and the Berkshires participated in the 24-hour Theatre Project on March 26, 2011, at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy. (Photo by Cindy L. Parrish)

Yvonne Perry, despite her years acting on “As The World Turns,” dreamed about it beforehand — one of those “actor’s stressful dreams,” she says.

Then, after it was over, she couldn’t even get to sleep. She would lie awake for a couple of hours; her head spinning.

“It was incredibly invigorating,” says the actress, who lives in Loudonville, of the 24-hour Berkshires-Capital Region Theatre Project. “I can tell you, everybody who did it wants to do it again.”

The project took place last weekend at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy. Kristen van Ginhoven, co-artistic director of WAM Theatre in the Berkshires, and Kat Koppett, co-director of the Mop & Bucket Co. in Schenectady, assembled 51 professionals — playwrights, directors, designers, actors, stage managers, technicians, documentarians and helpers — to create and perform a play in 24 hours.

Similar projects have been done in other parts of the country, and they decided to try it here as a way of getting professionals together from the Berkshires and Capital Region, letting them get to know one another for possible future collaborations.

Last Friday night, the group met at the Arts Center — including the five playwrights, five directors and 21 actors. They were matched up in five teams by drawing names out of a bowl — one playwright with one director and from three to five actors. At 9 p.m., they all left.

Then, the playwright had all night to write a play, and the directors, starting at 9 a.m. Saturday back at the Arts Center, had the day to rehearse it with their groups. Meanwhile, scenic and light designers did “some major magic,” van Ginhoven says. At 8 p.m., the five teams performed their plays, which ranged from 11 to 15 minutes, to a sold-out crowd of 120 that erupted into a standing ovation at the end.

“We thought for sure we’d get at least one play that was not very good at all,” van Ginhoven says. “But that didn’t happen.”

The plays dealt with motherhood, bigotry and the lies parents tell their children. In one, a father’s ghost talks to his children as his former wife prepares to bring her new lover home for dinner. In another, family members contemplate their lives on their last day on Earth.

Van Ginhoven says they hope to do it again next year in the Berkshires. Mark Fleischer, for one, would love to be there. He is producing artistic director at Adirondack Theatre Festival in Glens Falls, and he was one of the five directors. Before the 24-hour frenzy he was a little worried, he says, because he’s big on preparation.

“I figured I’d have to learn to relax and go with the flow,” he says. “I don’t often get the opportunity just to play. I have the pressure of single-ticket sales and deadlines and scripts. It’s kind of like going back to the original thing that got us here, when I was 10 and making plays and producing them in my garage with my neighborhood friends.”

He says he had a blast. That seems to be the universal feeling.

“It was really fun,” says Koppett, of the Mop & Bucket improvisational group and one of the five playwrights. “It was really sort of amazing.”