In April, the drama club added a new event to its books – a 24-hour playfest.
The rules are simple: The job is to write, direct, and produce a 20-30 minute show in 24 hours. While the task sounds colossal, the club managed to create four shows in that exact time.
“I feel like people hyped it up to be a lot more difficult than it was,” freshman Ethan Wallace said. “It was a lot of fun being around friends and performers, and given the little amount of time that we had.”
Sophomore Kevin Rhue was the primary organizer of the event.
“We started by getting our writers who are assigned a random theme, and they are assigned a director,” Rhue said. “By the time that the after-school meeting and selection is over, they have until the next morning at 8 a.m. to write the show. Then they hand off the show to the director, and from that time until 8 p.m, they are getting actors, costumes, sets, props. All of this happened in 24 hours.”
The idea was first conceived by Rhue, a longtime drama club member and sophomore representative of the drama club.
“The idea came from social media where I saw this really cool idea of doing a play in a day, which is a full-length show or an hour-and-a-half-long musical,” Rhue said. “Since we’re in high school, I knew we wouldn’t be able to pull off something that big, but 4 smaller shows with different casts could be more manageable, and it would be a lot of fun.”
The playfest was created as a means to bring in new people. The club’s life force comes from the freshmen and sophomores who sign up for Drama Club with a potential future in higher-up positions in the club.
“I would say the playfest brought in a lot of new members,” Rhue said. “It built some excitement for what we could do in the future because this year alone, there have been a lot of new things that we’ve done that have brought a new energy to the club.”
While this was an incredible event and difficult to put together, nothing quite goes according to plan.
“There were a couple issues, specifically with scheduling,” Rhue said. “The Derby Madrigals, the top honor choir, is a big part of the drama club, and they had their big trip to Dallas on the same weekend as the playfest, so we lost a lot of our members, and they were not able to participate at all. So the struggle to find members was tough. Some of our writers struggled writing, but that wasn’t as big an issue. It’s a simple high school show, so there isn’t as much pressure with it.”
This event served a dual purpose. On top of bringing in new people, it also served as a fundraiser for the International Thespian Festival (ITF).
“We raised the money for ITF because this year we qualified to send over 11 members to the International Thespian Festival in Bloomington, Indiana,” Rhue said. “It’s happening this summer, and it costs a lot of money to go.”
Thanks to the playfest, new members have joined up and started their time in the Drama Club, making productions for the club.
“I am a newcomer, this was my first actual event that wasn’t a one-act, and it was my first time acting ever,” junior David Ridgway said. “I am definitely going to continue acting because of it. My parents loved it, my friends loved it, and I just loved it. It was so cool. I think this event showed that Drama Club has the ability to learn and apply in a very short amount of time under a lot of pressure.”