Imagine you’re a budding playwright and you were given 24 hours to write, cast, rehearse and premiere a new play.
Now multiply that by seven.
Seven playwrights. Seven directors. Seven separate casts. Seven world premieres, all on one night, on one stage.
Sounds kinda like head-spinning chaos, right?
“I like to say it’s organized chaos in the best way possible,” Annika Maher said of The Theatre’s “24/7 Play Festival” held last weekend at downtown’s Historic Y. “There’s a lot of prep work that we do ahead of time to make sure that on the day it happens, we’re all ready to go and on the same page.”
Director Alex Totillo watches her cast work through “Escape Room” in one of the spaces in The Historic Y, home of The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, for the third 24/7 Play Festival. The plays had casts of three to four actors who were randomly assigned to the playwrights, giving the writers info to shape their scripts.
This was the third year the company has held the festival, which featured seven playwrights locked into a downtown coffee shop from 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, until their deadline, 4 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 16, when they were expected to have completed a nine- to 11-page script.
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Playwright Madeline Hill goes through her process while writing the script for what will become “The Third Strangest Thing to Happen In Marfa, Texas in 2003” for The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre’s 24/7 Play Festival. Hill, the youngest playwright participating at 19, was one of seven writers “locked” in Exo Roast Co. coffee shop at 8 p.m. Friday to write a script for a 10-minute play with a 4 a.m. Saturday deadline. The scripts were then produced and debuted to an audience at 7 p.m. Hill’s headgear was the prompt she randomly drew that had to be incorporated into her tale.
Maher, Scoundrel & Scamp’s co-artistic and managing director, said playwrights were given a trio of prompts that had to be incorporated into the plays: a music genre, a mask from Scoundrel & Scamp’s costume collection, and the words “knock knock” or a knocking sound effect.
Dennis O’Dell takes a long moment in his dark corner of Exo Roast Co. coffee shop after hours of writing his 10-minute play during The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre’s 24/7 Play Festival. O’Dell was a veteran of the one-play-in-24-hours structure, having participated in the festival before.
The playwrights came back with “a very wide variety of plays,” Maher said, including a comedy about two jazz musicians each named Knock whose disagreement over which jazz artist they would listen to turns into a bizarre story involving one of them turning into a boar.
Directors Dawn McMillian, left, and Samantha Severson have a laugh while getting their first real look at the scripts during the festival. The seven directors randomly drew their assignments around 7:30 and had a half hour to get familiar with the work before the actors arrived.
“It kind of goes off the rocker there,” Maher said.
Tyler Gastelum, left, and Ivan Medina as Eric Knock and John Knock, unrelated, rehearse “Jazz is a Bore,” one of the entries in the 24/7 Play Festival. Actors had about 11 hours to work with the scripts, getting their first looks at the pages shortly after 8 a.m. for a 7 p.m. curtain.
“And then there’s more heartfelt stories about a brother and sister who lost their parents and the brother is on the autism spectrum. It’s about how to move forward in their daily lives,” she said.
Maryssa Orta, as Frances, trods the boards as “The Third Strangest Thing to Happen in Marfa, Texas in 2003” sees the lights on stage. The play was one of seven to be written, produced and performed, start to finish, in 24 hours.
One of the plays was about producing a radio play, another was centered on a seance to resurrect grandpa, who teaches them about hip-hop. A play about an escape room incorporated “knock knock” as a sound effect, another used it as a knock on a door. One play opened with a classic knock-knock joke.
Justine Wilken’s Constance Foley wrestles for the mic, performing in the radio-play-within-the-play “Death at the Driftwood Diner” at the festival. Masks, music genre and a phrase were requirements to be included, someway, somehow, in the performances.
Seven casts performed the seven 10-minute plays twice on Aug. 16 in the 105-seat theater. Mayer said both shows were sold out.
Director Page Burkholder retreats outside the theater to try get a handle on hip-hop, music she had no prior experience with and a crucial element of the play “Tell Me About The Good OG Days” for The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre’s 24/7 Play Festival. A music genre was a detail the writers drew randomly and had to include in their scripts.
Audrey Bailey, left, Emily Fuchs and Stephen Norton get a few precious minutes on stage to hone their performances before the opening of “Tell Me About The Good OG Days” at the festival.
The “24/7 Play Festival” was the brainchild of Scoundrel & Scamp’s founders and owners, Brian and Elizabeth Falcón. Maher, who has been with the company since 2021, said there are a number of theater companies in the country doing similar events, but they are the only ones doing it in Tucson.
Carlisle Ellis pokes out of the wings with a blocking question during tech rehearsal for “Death at the Driftwood Diner,” one of the entries in the 24/7 Play Festival. Casts and directors of the seven plays had 45 minutes on stage to get the tech aspects ironed out.
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Scoundrel & Scamp’s season continues Sept. 12-14 with Wolfe Bowart’s “The WoBo Show,” the first in a three-show series that continues in November and January, 2026. For details, visit .
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
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