Monday, March 9, 2009

The History

In May of 2007, Blake (Phare Play's Artistic Director) was directing a Southern adaptation of The Cherry Orchard at the Beckmann. Unfortunately, one of the actors would not be able to do a Saturday night show, but he was absolutely too fantastic in the part to even consider recasting him. So, we were left show-less for that night.

That was quickly remedied when we decided to try and do what I affectionately refer to as kamikazi theatre. Putting up a one act festival in a mere 21 hours.

We called it "Who Wears Short Shorts?" because at the time, we were doing quarterly nights of one acts that were all called Something Shorts - like Fall Shorts, Inside Carl's Shorts, etc. As you can tell, it has been consequently abbreviated down to WWSS.

The first time we attempted this - Blake masterminded most of it as I was on board as a director for our inaugural outing. We had five writers, five directors and only 19 actors. The theme was homecoming (a theme of "The Cherry Orchard"). The line was "What the hell is this piano doing here?" since we had a piano in the theatre that we couldn't really move out of there. The writers had no page limit and twelve hours to come back to us with something. The directors were each given a random prop that they drew out of a bag and that's what they had to run with. The winner for best show was "Don't Eat the Neighbors" by Jennifer Spragg directed by Vallen Pilgrim starring Angela Donovan, Emily Ehlinger, Emily Mostyn Brown, and Jasmine Spiess. We had eight people show up between the two shows - mainly because I think at the time, no one really knew what to expect.

Oh how things changed when we did it later. And we had to do it again because people had too much fun with it the first time.

The second time around, I had suggested superheroes as a theme. Of course, Blake blabbed it too early to the participants and so we had to alter it a little bit. The theme ended up being superhero sidekicks (fitting since the show we were doing at the time was "Carl the Second"). The line was "Someone give me some Vaseline and help me take off my rings, ‘cause I’m gonna beat this homey gee, til he can’t homey see!" (That line was all Blake's doing!). And we decided to make everyone use the same prop so Blake brought every one a roll of paper towels. We had still did five shows with 20 actors participating. Again, Jen Spragg took home Best in Show with "The Chip Hydeberger Show" directed by Chris Simon starring Emily Ehlinger, Jason Gaffney, Nick Santasier and Lizzie Schwarz.

When we did WWSS Cubed, we had so much interest that I was able to pull out of directing and help Blake plan. We upped it to six shows with 24 actors being a part of it. This time the theme was "Music Over Time". Each writer picked a decade and they had to somehow incorporate music from that time. The universal prop was a deck of playing cards. The line was done madlib style - "Our love is like a BLANK (insert an appliance of some kind here) - BLANK, BLANK and BLANK; but I’m okay with that." Kendall Rileigh won the show this time around with "The Fish Can Dance" - her ode to the music of the 90s, directed by Vallen Pilgrim and starring Mark Anderson, Robert Carroll, Erin Fehr and Pete Kilcommons. She also won best use of line for this gem spoken from Robert to Mark - "Our love is like a furnace: hot, steamy and closeted; but I’m okay with that." For more about this night - I did end up writing a blog entry about it which can be found here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=210827182&blogId=372560359

And our last outing - WWSS4: Four Your Shorts Only. We went with a movie theme. This time, we upped the stakes - seven shows, seven writers and directors and 28 performers. The line was still a madlib : "On a day like this, I want _____, ______, and ______; a spanking would be nice, too". To even make it more random, we had the writers draw their four actors out of a bowl (we used to plan it out in advance) as well as their genre (they each got a movie genre) and sin (yes, they each had to use one of the seven deadly sins). Then the directors drew the names of writers out of a bowl the next morning (again, it was something we had previously planned out) and the order the shows would run in was done in the same manner.

As many of you may know, it was crazy successful with a beyond sold out crowd the second show - people were actually sitting on the stage! The winner was Oliver Thrun's "Force the World to Die" directed by Chrissie Kahler and starring Branden Hayward, Natalie Neckyfarow, Klemen Novak and Steve Ringwald. Their theme was Spy Flick and their sin was Gluttony. I even hear that someone had taped one of the shows and it can be found on youtube...

Duncan Pflaster, one of the writers, wrote a great article about his experience which can be found here: http://thefabmarquee.blogspot.com/2008/11/and-all-coffee-payed-off-duncan.html

And that brings us to our yet to be titled and themed WWSS5. Oliver will be back to defend his title on March 28th! Hopefully you will come witness the insanity and fun!

Signed, Christine Weems
(former WWSS director and Executive Director of Phare Play)

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