Stepping inside the creative whirlwind of 14/48 Vashon

A circle of 70-odd chairs sat in the cavernous Grand Hall of Open Space for Arts and Community.

People trickled in, catching up with friends from Vashon’s performing arts scene and meeting other theater artists from Seattle.

It’s 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30, and in just 24 hours, this crowd of fearless writers, actors, musicians, techies, builders and makeup artists will have dreamed up, designed, outfitted and performed seven plays from scratch on Friday night. Then, they’ll have done it all over again.

This is how 14/48, billed as “The World’s Quickest Theater Festival,” works: On Thursday, the group chose a random theme to guide writers as they crafted 10-minute scripts overnight. Then, on Friday morning, directors and casts were randomly assigned to each of the seven plays.

Throughout the day, designers built sets and props, musicians practiced and actors rehearsed. The first show began at 7 p.m., after which a theme was drawn from audience suggestions for Saturday’s shows. Then came another performance at 9 p.m., as the writers scuttled back home to write new plays for Saturday night’s shows.

14/48 started in Seattle in 1997, and came to Vashon in 2017. Since its inception, the show has spread across the country and even internationally.

For local theater artists, the festival is an annual chance to bond and create under intense time pressure.

“This is a gathering of everybody, the good, the great, the slightly wonky of Vashon theater,” actor and planning committee member Cate O’Kane told the group on Thursday.

Among the participants this year was islander Matthew Fontaine, who directed for half a decade when he was in his 20s.

“That’s one of the cool things about Vashon — a lot of us do have other lives and careers, and some of us are in arts full time and some of us aren’t,” Fontaine said. “I really enjoy directing, but I haven’t set my life up in a way that that’s a focus for me. So it’s really great to be able to come back and do this.”

Production member Tory Hayes walked around the circle with a giant plastic ice cream cone, collecting slips with suggestions for the theme for Friday night’s plays.

Meanwhile, in California, 14/48 Hollywood participants gathered to choose their theme, too. For the first time in 14/48 history, two concurrent festivals were happening — so in a twist, the Vashon and Hollywood teams chose themes for each other. Vashon’s writers received “As You Wish.”

Around 9 a.m. on Friday, the design team convened in the Grand Hall, the day of the first shows. With only a shoestring budget, the team crowd-sourced much of its scenery and props. One show, set on a putt-putt golf course, tasked the design team with finding clubs, golfing attire, a windmill and a giant teddy bear.

At the same time, actors joined the writers and directors in a back room and were randomly assigned to each play.

By 10:05 p.m. the night before, writer Maria Glanz had finished her first draft of a play, but she wasn’t quite satisfied with it.

“I tried another draft, and then I went back to the first one, and I was sure it was really bad, and then I figured it had to be good enough, and then it was 1 a.m., and I couldn’t go to sleep,” she said.

But on Friday morning, Glanz sat in on the first read-through of her script, “A New Life,” smiling as she listened. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes — perhaps just because she’d been up half the night.

Each team was tucked away in different rooms throughout the Open Space maze. Walking down the hallway, there could be heard snippets of scripts, some stumbling over lines and bursts of laughter.

In one rehearsal room, Fontaine watched actors Martha Enson and Brian Palermo read through a two-person play called “Whale Watching,” which playwright writer Lisa Peretti set in a rowboat. The actors read the script out loud twice, switching characters the second time, as Fontaine determined the best fit for the play.

In less than nine hours, the characters would be sorted, lines memorized, lighting timed, band coordinated and scenes set.

That night at 7 p.m., after 24 hours of frantic preparations, it was finally time to bring the seven plays to life. Open Space founder David Godsey welcomed the large audience with the same over-the-top enthusiasm that shaped the event.

First on the stage was “Just a Regular Putt Putt Double Date – First Date at Arnie’s Famous Putt Putt Corral,” written by the Seattle playwriting team of S.W. Jones and Mariah Lee Squires.

The play — a tight match for the “As You Wish” theme of the evening — featured islander Steven Sterne as a character not-so-subtly named Gene E., who was obligated to grant a series of minor wishes made by his fellow putt-putters — all the while pleading for them to wish for freedom for all, especially those bound to life inside a magic lamp.

In Glanz’s play, “A New Life,” directed by Brooke Osment, the character June made an irreversible wish in a moment of frustration. The consequences unfolded as June’s ex, Sam, a slimy gentleman with an uncanny smile, transformed their child into a puppet-like version of himself. With a sinister smile plastered on his face, Sam leaves with their child, saying “be careful what you wish for.”

“Whale Watching,” by Peretti, wound up showcasing Enson’s impressive physical theater skills, as she clamored dangerously over Palermo in a shaky row boat. The band’s jumble of minor chords, soundtracking the play, only heightened the tension.

The night was a celebration of spontaneity, collaboration, and talent — a reminder of what can be created under pressure. As the band ushered out Friday’s audience, the cycle began again, with a new theme — which, appropriately, was “Do Over” — and another race against the clock began.

Mari Kanagy is a contributing journalist to The Beachcomber.