The Southwestern College Theatre Department 24-Hour Plays will be a major cooperative project this year with Cowley College.  Joined by area high school teachers and students, and alumni Campus Player and Horsefeathers and Applesauce (H&A) actors, they will create and complete a full evening of theatre with six 10-minute plays to be presented Saturday, Sept. 9, at 7:30 p.m., in the Richardson Performing Arts Center on the campus of Southwestern College.  The public is invited to attend.  Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $6 for students, and no charge for SC faculty, staff, and students.  

 

The event is licensed by 24 Hour Plays, a New York organization which gives structures, guidelines, timelines, and suggestions to work out all the details.

 

This is SC’s sixth year to create 24-Hour Plays.

 

Participants will include:

• Cowley College students; director of theatre Cara Kem; and designer/technical director, John Rohr.    

• Wellington High School students and their teacher, Jessica Coldwell

• Southwestern College students; director of theatre, Allyson Moon; faculty member Paula Makar; and technical director, Kenny Allman.  

 

Jeannine Russell, a Southwestern College Campus Player, and Wichita State University playwrighting professor, and Meagan Morrow, a Southwestern College Campus Player, will also participate as playwrights.  The festival will begin the evening of the Sept. 8 and will conclude the evening of Sept. 9.  

Starting at 9:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 8, playwrights, actors, directors, assistant directors, and technicians will begin.   Working in shifts so everyone gets a chance to sleep, the playwrights, directors, actors and technicians will work in shifts all night and day to write and create the collection of 10-minute plays which will perform Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and finish by 9 p.m., allowing the actors the time to strike the sets and costumes, clean the theatre, and be done in 24 hours. 

 

To begin, participants introduce themselves and inspire the plays as each brings a costume piece and a prop and tells about their talents.  Pictures are taken of each actor, and by 11 p.m., the playwrights will choose actors for their plays and begin writing while the rest of the company goes to sleep in their dorms or homes across the town.   

 

SC and H & A alumni, along with faculty and students from area community colleges and high schools,

may be housed in the homes of SC theatre patrons who may come see the introductions, take them to a bed for the night, and then bring or them back to the college by 8 a.m., Saturday to begin their 12 hours of rehearsal and tech work for the new plays. Saturday evening theatre patrons are invited back to have a special experience with their “adopted” participant during the evening.  

 

The Campus Player and H & A alumni return to SC not only because of their relationship to SC and theatre, but also to experience with the whole Winfield community.  

 

Community members who would like house a student are asked to contact Kristin Porter, faculty assistant for performing arts, at (620) 229-6272.