Most theater productions rely on hours and hours of rehearsal. But the students involved in WiRED, Dartmouth's quarterly 24-hour playwriting experience, threw this standard to the wind. Given only one day to write, rehearse and perform short plays, four groups of participants relied heavily on improvisation to create plays based on one, pre-determined prompt.
The Dartmouth's David Jiang spent the day with the WiRED cast and crew. The following is a first-hand account of his experience observing the production process and participating in the show.
The four different groups of writers began the process on Friday night when production manager Daniella Sloane '10 revealed their prompt: "Tell one scene from at least two perspectives."
In anticipation of the long 24 hours ahead, the writers requested that Sloane pick up caffeinated drinks from Topside.
The writers dispersed to different working spaces to begin writing: Diana Jih '09 and Dave Yoss '09 headed to the theater department's green room, Carmen Kilpatrick '09 and Michelle Reyf '10 worked in Wilson 301, and Matt Scott '11 and Robert Greer '11 decided to go off-campus.
Dylan Hume '09 and Astrid Bradley '09 worked on WiRED Abridged, a staple of the event that had been missing for several terms. WiRED Abridged plays are limited to 10 minutes and have only two characters. Hume and Bradley titled their work "Le Rendezvous."
Students arrived to audition for the plays at 8 a.m. on Saturday. Some of the participants were associated with Dartmouth theater, while others were friends of the writer-directors or else just looking for random fun on a Saturday. Prior acting experience was not a requirement, and everyone got a role.
In the Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center, Yoss and Jih discussed the premise of their play, "Beach Parties Fall Apart," a spoof of the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach party movies from the 1960s that is set on a remote Polynesian island. The Polynesian natives stumble upon the film shoot of one of Avalon and Funicello's films, misinterpret it as an act of aggression, and terrorize the bikini-clad dancers and sweet-dude guitarists. At the end, an anthropologist comes out from the audience, explaining that the whole thing is a cultural misunderstanding.
Yoss asked his actors, who played happy-go-lucky beach party guests, to do a sinister version of the 1960s "The Twist" as if they were "sexually repressed monsters."
I spent most of the day in Wilson 301, observing Kilpatrick and Reyf's rehearsal for "Space Race," in which Sharang Biswas '12 and Tica Douglas '10 were cast as leads.
The play centered on two couples, one American and another Russian, who create fake videos of their respective countries landing on the moon. The couples then compete to be the first to submit their tape to the editors of The New York Times. Biswas put on a Russian accent to play evil mafia member Boris.
For an event like WiRED, with just-written, untested characters and a limited number of students auditioning, it can be difficult to match actors to roles. At 12:00 p.m., Kilpatrick and Reyf still had nobody to fill one of their lead roles. Everyone frantically scrolled through their cell phone contacts.
"This is absurd," Reyf said. "Is this how people spend WiRED -- calling their friends?"
Eventually someone called Brian May '10, a WiRED veteran. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he agreed to play the part.
The writer-directors had their prop lists prepared by mid-afternoon. "Space Race" needed one unusual prop -- a giant moon crater for the simulated moon landings. Given the limited options in the theater department's prop room, the WiRED managers had to get creative. Sloane eventually found a large pink foam wedding cake in the crowded and dusty shelves backstage. When covered by a grayish blanket, the cake resembled a rock. Perfect.
"The thing about WiRED is that we get support from the theater department. They give us a venue -- the Bentley -- and use of their prop room," Sloane said, adding, however, that the involved students do not get access to all of the department's resources, and so have to improvise.
Sometimes small one- or two-line roles are not filled until later in the day. "Space Race" had two such roles: a Russian henchman and a secretary at The New York Times.
Finally came the hectic pre-show rush around 7 p.m. In the rehearsal room, the actors and directors were busy making last-minute adjustments to costumes, signs and props. Reyf and Douglas masterfully mangled tinfoil to look like space helmets. May, with the help of large glasses and a drawn-on mustache, transformed into NASA worker George Matthews.
Minutes before show time, Sloane came in to give a final pep talk, congratulating everyone on a great job and calling the day "relatively stress-free."
The actors did a few warm-ups, and then it was on with the show.
The original version of this article incorrectly quoted Daniella Sloane '10 as saying that WiRED is not a theater department-sponsored event. In fact, Sloane noted that because the involved students do not have access to all of the department's resources for the event, they occasionally must improvise.
