Over 40 students sign up to participate in this years productions

Megan Biar, Staff Reporter
Originally published April 10, 2014

The 24 hour plays are an opportunity for student’s to showcase their talents. The whole event, including writing, memorizing and the performance occurs within a day, begins at 7:30 p.m. on April 25th and ending with the show, at 7:30 p.m. on April 26th.

“Last year we did a theme, social justice. This year it’s based off an aphorism: ‘don’t hate, educate, tell your story’ and each of the six plays will start with one of the six words,” Language Arts teacher and 24 Hour Plays advisor Sooz Stahl said.

In the 24 hour time allotment, the writers first create a play roughly 10 minutes long. “First, everybody involved in the project gets together and brings a prop and a costume and shows any spunky talents they have. Anything that will inspire the writers,” Stahl said. Then, the directors show up and pick their scripts, gather their actors and rehearse until showtime at 7:30 p.m. the next night.

“There’s certain things you have to think about when you have essentially eight hours to rehearse. A lot of the people in the project aren’t experienced with drama, so we try to make everything manageable,” Stahl said.

Stahl and fellow Language Arts teacher Kristin Storey are organizing the event, with a total of forty-five students participating this year: 13 writers, 30 actors and two producers. This year, student producers who have participated in past years have helped run and organize the project.

“It’s not like normal plays and musicals Ballard usually has, we can’t write in long monologues and expect them to memorize it,” producer and senior Liz Rosario said.