They'll be playing for keeps

For a good cause, three dozen of South Florida's finest theater talents pit themselves and their creativity against the clock.

At some arts benefits, it's all about food, fine wine and a glossy show. Others feature artsy items at a silent auction.

But Monday evening at GableStage, a first-for-South Florida benefit will bring together four impressive companies -- and some local marquee names -- to help sustain small theaters that have meager resources but big dreams.

Fueled by creativity and caffeine, six playwrights, six directors and 24 actors will create, rehearse and perform a half-dozen short plays in an intense, unpredictable process called the 24-Hour Theatre Project.

Just how crazy might this theater-on-speed thing get? Picture this: Six playwrights trying to tweak their scripts after not sleeping at all. Actors trying to memorize lines, cues and movement after starting rehearsal at an ungodly hour many haven't seen for years.

The driving force behind the event is The Naked Stage, which so far has produced just one show, a very good production of Romeo and Juliet last April. Naked Stage founders, husband-wife team Antonio and Katherine Amadeo and John Manzelli, have a grand vision for their theater's future and the collaborative possibilities of South Florida's theater community.

They're starting with the 24-Hour Theatre Project, which, to be entirely truthful, will probably take more like 27 hours from its beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday to the post-performance party Monday.

"When John moved back here from New York, he said we should look at the possibility of doing one of these things," says Antonio Amadeo, who is overseeing Monday's one-time-only event.

"Katie wanted to do a performance thing, something fun and different. And I wanted to do something that was theater community-based. So it's really an amalgam of the ideas of all three of us. Once we decided to do it, I said let's invite three specific companies to join us, small companies who could benefit from the money and the publicity."

EQUAL SHARES

So at Naked Stage's invitation a few months ago, Miami's Mad Cat Theatre Company, Davie's Promethean Theatre and Miami's Ground Up & Rising came on board, and all four companies will get an equal share of the $50-per-person ticket sales.

GableStage producing artistic director Joseph Adler, who often loans out his company's 150-seat space in Coral Gables' Biltmore Hotel for readings or benefits, came through again. And when the buzz started building in the theater community, everyone wanted in.

"I technically followed them and hounded them," says a laughing Marco Ramirez, an award-winning young playwright whose Mr. Beast just opened at Mad Cat. "The roster [of talent] is amazing. It sounds like a great time. I like working under a deadline."

Ramirez is certainly going to get that wish fulfilled. He and the other five playwrights -- Andie Arthur, executive director of the Theatre League of South Florida; Ricky J. Martinez, artistic director of New Theatre; Juan C. Sanchez; Will Cabrera; and Michael McKeever -- will gather Sunday evening at Naked Stage's home base, the Pelican Theatre on the Barry University campus in Miami Shores.

In random order, each writer will dip into three separate hats -- one with the six directors' names, one with actors' names, the last one with six play titles. The playwrights can brainstorm with their director and cast for a couple of hours or simply vanish and begin crafting a short play.

"Yes, it's a lot of work, and yes, it's crazy," says McKeever. "But it's really about community and having fun -- just tweaked to seven times faster."

By 7:30 Monday morning, everyone will assemble at GableStage, where the writers will hand the scripts off to the directors and actors. Rehearsals, both in the theater and in Biltmore banquet rooms, run until 4:30 p.m. Technical rehearsals and dinner happen from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.

(For a behind-themadness look at the event as it unfolds, check out my Drama Queen blog at MiamiHerald.com beginning Sunday night.)

Then at 8 p.m. Monday, South Florida's first plunge into the make-it-fast theater experience will unfold.

The concept, however, isn't new.

Since 1995, the New York-based 24 Hour Company has been working the process at benefits in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London and other cities large and small.

Playwrights like David Lindsay-Abaire, Warren Leight, Diana Son, Eduardo Machado and Theresa Rebeck have tested themselves through that process, as have numerous famous-name actors: Jennifer Anniston, Billy Crudup, Chris Rock, Christina Ricci, Amanda Peet, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Liev Schreiber.

WHAT MONEY?

Last month's Broadway benefit raised $290,000. Monday's GableStage event will raise far less -- $7,500, if every seat is sold. But for the artists involved, the money is almost beside the point.

Tina Fallon, founding producer of the 24 Hour Company, acknowledges that she borrowed the concept from a comic book author who got his pals to create comic books in 24 hours "to snap them out of their creative funk." She put together the first event in 1995 "to get people to drop their developmental angst and work together. You never have enough money or enough time."

The actors, directors and playwrights, Fallon says from New York, find the process "a real rush. It's deeply, deeply terrifying . . . At some point, they'll wish they hadn't done it. They'll call everyone they know and ask them not to come. But I promise them the feeling will pass."

Two actors in the South Florida event have worked the 24-hour play concept before -- Kameshia Duncan in Atlanta and Bechir Sylvain when he was a student at Southern Methodist University. Both found the experience thrilling and learned from it.

"Your adrenaline has to be in overdrive from start to finish," Duncan says. "You have to be open to the process, real flexible. The biggest pitfall is when the actors are not having fun."

Says Sylvan: "The playwrights can't make things too complicated or write too much dialogue. It has to be all about cause and effect. It is the scariest thing. It's allowing yourself to be as open as possible and grow as an actor. And face the fear of failing."

As the realization of all of Naked Stage's complicated planning draws near, participants are feeling a mixture of anticipation and fear.

"I know it's going to be a very challenging thing," says playwright Sanchez. "I'm really scared . . . I know I'm going to be tired and freaked about, worried about whether the actors and director will like it."

ADMIRATION CLUB

Both Duncan and Lela Elam, who will give their final performance in GableStage's In the Continuum while the playwrights are picking titles, directors and casts at Barry, are savoring the possibility of working for the first time with actors and directors they admire. Both mention that they would love to be an a play with Lisa Morgan.

Morgan, a Carbonell Award-winning actress who moves from one major role to the next at the region's larger theaters, is taking part because she wants to support small companies that can't pay the salary she now gets. An artist with a dry sense of humor, Morgan's is up for whatever gets thrown her way.

"I probably won't really be able to help, because I'm 46 and I can't remember lines," she says with a laugh. "Do [these playwrights] want to write about hamsters on crack? I don't know. If they write me a monologue, I'm going to have to make s - - t up."

Naked Stage's Amadeo is hoping that the first 24-Hour Theatre Project will go so well that it will expand.

"We hope it can become an anchor event in South Florida, that it can involve more actors, directors and designers, maybe become a weekend-long event," he says.

Whether GableStage will host the event again might depend on how Adler, who is participating as an actor, fares at the hands of theater people who both adore him and find his work process, um, challenging.

"I would love to direct Joe," says Mad Cat founder Paul Tei. "It would be a blast to direct someone that intelligent and that difficult."

Deborah L. Sherman, the Promethean's artistic director, once appeared in Ten Unknowns at GableStage, and at one point wound up nude, drenched and shivering onstage. She says she hopes she's not in the same cast as Adler. Though she thinks the world of him, she suspects that given "the agita he has as a director," she might wind up killing him.

But if she and Adler do somehow wind up working together as actors, she knows what she wants to see: "He needs to be naked and wet, as far as I'm concerned."

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.