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Roy Stanton in M.J. Sieber's "The Galactic Journeys of the Virgo 12," last Friday at 14/48. Photo by Matthew Larson.
Amidst the hustle and bustle of the lobby at On the Boards last Friday night, as the audience exiting the 8 p.m. performance of 14/48: The World's Quickest Theatre Festival, clashed with the incoming patrons for the 10:30 show, we found ourselves in the back corner chatting with Seattle director Aimee Bruneau.
"It was one of the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences of my creative life. It's like crack, it's like a roller coaster and you just don't know if it's going to arrive safely," she said of her first experience at the 14/48 theatre festival back in 1999 or 2000. Last Friday, Bruneau was directing a piece called Single's Night by local writer Becky Bruhn, a short comic piece about two dorky men who love Star Trek, trying to pick up women in a bar by standing near the women's room.
"You got to check your ego at the door. You're not coming here to succeed," she says with relish. "You might be coming here to fail."
That, more than anything, is probably why 14/48, which concludes tonight and tomorrow at OtB (tix $18) has become such a beloved local institution, both for the theatre artists themselves--who flock to the twice-yearly festival in sufficient numbers that every festival, a full quarter of the artists involved are first-timers--and audiences, which are typically more diverse and enthusiastic than normal theatre crowds. Most theatre-sports are blandly risk-free--improv, for instance, is anything but off the cuff. But at 14/48, there's a real risk of failure, and audiences, attracted by the smell of blood in the air, are attracted in ever-increasing numbers.
For those uninitiated (and last weekend was our first 14/48), the festival works by bringing together seven writers, seven directors, and enough actors, designers, and musicians to pull it off. Thursday night, a theme is picked, the writers write 10-minutes plays over night, the production is rehearsed the next day, then performed that evening. After the show, another theme is picked, and the whole thing starts all over again: 14 original plays in 48 hours. And it's not just the artists who are working feverishly: the bloggers for the 14/48 blog have put out about as many posts in the last week as most blogs manage in a month, adding a new level of intimacy and immediacy to the festival.
As we finished chatting with Bruneau, local writer Jim Jewell stopped by. Although he was a playwright last weekend, Jewell's been a dedicated contributor to 14/48 since 1999, serving as everything from stage manager to the guy in charge of food. His contribution has been recognized with a Mazen Award, a prize given out by the festival in honor of overall contribution to the festival.
"This is Theatre 101 for theatre-goers who don't go to theatre, because you can come here and hate a play and feel safe about it," said Jewell before running home to start writing feverishly (the theme: "No good deed goes unpunished.") "I think a lot of people are afraid of theatre because they go to the Rep, and spend $35 on a ticket and they don't like it, they think it's going to be their fault. They're going to feel like, 'I didn't get something.' Here it's a very safe environment for the audience because the process lets them have very honest responses."
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