What did you do in the 24 hours starting from Friday at 6:30 p.m.?
A group of students were creating something incredible from scratch. Festival 24, which started in 2008 with only theatre productions, recently added film and dance performances to showcase the work of other students in the department. Festival 24 challenges students to produce a story from a one-word theme in 24 hours. Playwrights stayed up all night to write a 10-minute play. Directors and stage managers came in at 6:30 a.m. to cast actors. Rehearsals started right away, while the tech crew started coordinating light and sound.
This year’s program features four plays, a dance and a film. The Flex Theatre at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts filled up as soon as the house opened, with people even sitting down on the ground.
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To use project coordinator Irving Torres-Lopez’s ’18 words, “the amount of creative and emotional labor that went into this production is nothing short of remarkable.” Dancer Madeline Gray ’20 admitted that although the program has a lot of “rough edges along the way” due to lack of rehearsal, there’s “a kind of magic in making something so complete” in such a short period of time. Festival 24 is ephemeral and so particular to this moment in time, that I almost felt sad when it ended. But there’s always a next time, and if you want to see what some crazy, determined artists can create in one day, make sure to mark next semester’s date.
The full article appears in The Cornell Daily Sun.
