The 24 Hour Play Project

15TH SEPTEMBER 2022

On the 25th August, I felt my fundraising journey had come to a bit of a standstill. I had exhausted my list of grant applications, and had sent so many emails that were never so much as acknowledged. Yet I was still such a long way from my target. With my course start date less than a month away, I knew I couldn’t sit around and wait for the finances to come to me. But what could I do? It couldn’t be a sponsored bike ride or walkathon. It had to be something that involved everyone who had supported me. An evening we could share and remember in years to come.

And that spark ignited into The 24 Hour Play Project.

The plan was ambitious. I would gather a group of creatives in a theatre, and we would attempt to write, stage and perform a play, from scratch, within 24 hours. I would start writing the play at 8pm on September 1st, and the doors would open to an audience at 7pm the following day.

I set myself a target of £3000 to raise, through ‘pay what you want’ ticket sales, and a large raffle at the end of the night. 

The first step was to get access to a theatre for an entire 24 hour period. This would be tricky if it were not for the unconditional support of my local theatre, the Congress Theatre in Cwmbran, who offered the venue to me free of charge for the entire day. I was blown away by this offer as without it I would have needed a much larger budget! Also, the auditorium itself is an ideal space, and means so much to me as I spent a lot of time in the Youth Theatre growing up.

I then approached my ex youth theatre director, Rachel Hamilton, to ask her to direct the play. Once Rachel was on board, I knew the play would go up. Her experience in directing youngsters is vast, and, although she hadn’t done anything this intense before, she is used to working under pressure. No matter how well the writing turned out, I knew she could turn it into something good.

From there, I gathered a small cast of friends from my time at the Congress Youth Theatre and Tring Park School, who became my actors, technicians and filmmakers. I chose people who meant a lot to me but also had the capacity to pull such an intense feat off. I am lucky to have such versatile and talented friends.

Now that I had a crew and a date, it was time to start marketing. My friend Jordan was kind enough to design posters, and we set about spreading the word. My mum worked incredibly hard to share my story as widely as possible. We gained traction from the press and were gifted some amazing raffle prizes from local businesses, the first being a luxury stay in the Brecon Beacons, courtesy of Waterfall Country Pods!

To raise £3000 from nothing in 8 days seemed impossible. So you can imagine my surprise when we did it in 7! By the day of the event, I had reached my target. I can only thank my loving and supportive community for this. As the old proverb goes, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ and in this case, it takes a village to raise enough money for a child to go to film school!

However, hitting our target only added more pressure. We still had to put something up. I had to write an enjoyable play, make it look good, and give the audience value for their donation.

And so the day arrived. After a week of intense organisation, marketing, publicity, casting, travelling and flyer-handing, I brought the entire crew together. We met at 8pm on Thursday 1st September, for the cast to get to know each other as the countdown began. Each team member prepared 5 questions to find out how everyone liked to work, so that we could be as efficient as possible the following morning. 

Then came the part I had been dreading. I had to write a play, from scratch, in only 8 hours. The director and actors left the theatre at 10pm, and I sat down to work with the cameras rolling. With no idea what I would write, my plan was to give myself two hours of planning time, as I believe a solid plan is an absolute must! However, not even half an hour in, and we hit our first hurdle. Jonathan, the cameraman, had contracted a stomach bug and became very unwell. We knew it would be counterproductive to the following day’s filming if we proceeded as planned. We made the decision to take him home for a good night’s rest, which meant two things. One, I was already behind schedule. And two, I would have to spend the night in this massive theatre all alone.

I shut myself in the smallest room I could find, armed with coffee and a pack of doughnuts, and got to it. At 2am the plan was finished, which left me with 4 hours to write. At this point I had to put on some background music because the silence was too eerie! 

By 5am I had cycled through approximately 5 different endings, and still wasn’t satisfied with some of the lines, so made myself a large coffee and typed as fast as I could for the final hour!

When it came to handing over the script, I was so exhausted that when asked the genre of the play, I stated ‘I genuinely have no idea what it is’, much to the crew’s concern. In fact I wasn’t happy with what I had written right up until the first read-through! When the cast read the play and could see that it was a comedy through and through, I relaxed for the first time. My friends brought the play to life before my eyes, and in all honesty I couldn’t believe it was my work! They loved it, and set to work straight away. I had planned to sleep at this point, but the energy from the read-through had given me an adrenaline boost, and I had to keep going! 

Cut to 19:30 that day and the play was up. Wonderfully staged by Rachel, beautifully performed by the cast. They all did a stellar job and despite being there for the full process, I was blown away by the performance itself. The actors were flawless, and remembered all of their lines. The audience were brilliant and were laughing throughout, even giving a standing ovation at the end. I couldn’t have asked for more.

After adding the raffle contributions, the project raised a total of £3,943! This is an absolutely incredible amount of money that will make a massive difference towards my living costs for two years. 

Here's a video of the performance!

https://youtu.be/6cRB4ZmExGQ

And the press release!

https://www.cwmbranlife.co.uk/video-actors-prepare-to-perform-play-at-cwmbrans-congress-theatre-just-hours-after-receiving-the-script/