theater

You have two days to write a play: The "Spring Forward Bake-Off"

Three "ingredients" are offered to make a play. Mmm...creativity. 

Philly playwrights or playwrights-to-be are going to have a busy weekend: it's the fourth-annual "Spring Ahead" Philadelphia Bake-Off, a collaboration between Plays & Players and Philadelphia Dramatists Center, in which writers are given three "ingredients" -- elements of any conceivable nature -- to incorporate into a play they write over 72 hours. There's about 48 hours left, so get on it. (It's been done in 24 in many other similar exercises!) 

The ingredients were announced Thursday at noon, and are:

From Quiara Algeria Hudes (Water by the Spoonful): a search for a person or a people

From Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale and Bright New Boise): a can of Diet Coke from 1993

From Johnna Adams (Gideon's Knot): twisted child

Well. Good luck with that, playwrights.

On Sunday, March 9 (when we "spring ahead") from noon to 5 p.m., writers will convene to have local actors read their plays aloud as a kind of workshopping exercise with others in the theater community. To sign up, email Todd Holstberry at toddzz@hotmail.com. All you have to do is show up on Sunday with enough copies of the script for as many actors as needed, plus one to read stage directions. Doesn't matter if you're a newbie or a vet playwright, you're welcome to give the mad-dash exercise a shot, and the length of your play is up to you. The event is closed only to the playwrights on Sunday.

Produced by Jeremy Gable, a local playwright and actor, the Bake-Off was inspired by Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel, who did the exercise with students at Brown and Yale.

Daniel Student of Plays & Players said the Bake-Off is democratic in that nobody's fighting to see what show's going to get attention; anyone can participate. The "ingredients" creators, he said, were chosen because the Bake-Off creators wanted to have well-recognized playwrights inject their creativity into the mix.

"Big name national playwrights care what work is coming out of Philadelphia," Student said. 

Gregory Nanni, a playwright participating in the Bake-Off for the first time this year, said the exercise will be a bonding experience for the playwrights.

"What happens through this process is what you see is the playwright's personality coming through, and the style, and it's great to see how everyone interprets everything. Somehow, there's always a way to do something with the random mess [of ingredients]."

With this year's selection, he said the ingredients are fantastic.

"Take the '93 Coke can, for instance. It can either be used to tell the time of the piece ('93 or '94) or the piece can take place in a landfill or a park where one find old tossed cans...or in outer space if an astronaut threw out a can of Coke in '93 and another astronaut found it in 2058."

Georgie Keveson, another playwright on the board of PDC, said he's done a few 24-hour playwriting exercises with Plays & Players before,

"As much as you prepare, when you get those prompts you have to think on your feet," he said. "I don't really have any expectations, I took some time off for this so I can write a longer piece."

His reaction to the ingredients announcement?

"I immediately brewed a masssive pot of coffee. What's lovely about the prompts provided is that they are specific enough to get some great traction but vague enough to inspire freedom in exploring possible source material." 

The most important thing about the bakeoff, the three agreed, was that it gets writers out of the month-after-month obsession of self-editing and pouring over one work, and makes them just churn out creativity.

"Writers tend to do everything but write, that's the biggest challenge of being a writer," Student said. "A prompt and a public prompt, one you have a responsbility to show up with...I'm always shocked how many plays come out of this 72-hour period that end up being produced all over the world."