ALL CALL 24-Hour Play Festival
On May 15-16, I participated as a playwright in the ALL CALL 24-Hour Play Festival, presented by Theatre Knoxville Downtown. Six writers, six directors and 18(!) actors participated in this hugely popular event.
Everyone met at the theatre Friday evening, May 15th to divide into teams and receive prompts to use in a completely original and play, to be written by the playwrights. My team, the V GUYS (5 guys), consisted of director Scottie Smith and actors Matt Gainey, Mike Johnston Jr., and Joseph Brown. We collaborated together for a while to decide what kind of play we wanted to perform, then I was off home to go write.
I wrote a complete, 13-page, 15-minute play between about 10pm and 2:30am, entitled BLUE’S CLUELESS. You can download and read the play yourself here: https://newplayexchange.org/script/3316295/blues-clueless
I turned the play in about 3am (deadline was 8am the morning of the 16th), and the rest of the team had most of the day on the 16th to stage, rehearse and memorize the play I had written.
Then, the evening of the 16th, all six teams came back together at TKD to perform their plays.
I’ve had a lot of experience writing short plays very quickly: I’ve participated in the “Write Away!” online writing show several times (it’s presented by Freestyle Repertory Theatre and Synergy Theatre - learn more and sign up to participate here: https://www.synergytheater.com/synergy-theater-online/), which gives writers a handful of prompts and they go away to write a 6-7 page play based on those prompts in about 45 minutes. It’s a great exercise in prepping the story you want to tell and making sure it has a beginning, middle and an end.
My next theatrical event is the staged reading of The Snallygaster in September as part of Parkway Playhouse’s 2026 Appalachian Playwriting Festival in Burnsville, NC. Three finalist full-length plays will compete over three nights, and the winner will have a full production at Parkway in 2027.
You can watch the ALL CALL production of BLUE’S CLUELESS here: https://youtu.be/Ij9d54GDQqU?si=J933QVCJSq9Oe3uy
Barry
