Last weekend, rather quietly, or as quietly as possible for a gathering of college drama students on a Friday night, in an institutional and aggressively over-lit basement classroom, a fair handful of the dominant assumptions about theatre were being stretched, reshaped and challenged.

Though, in a way of thinking, it was just another open audition.

This gathering in Pitt's Cathedral of Learning was the fourth such meeting this school year for the contributors and members of RedEye Theatre: simply put, an organization dedicated to the idea that an evening of one act plays can be put on in a day. Which is to say, put on entirely in a single day, from auditions to casting to writing, rehearsing, directing and performing all in the space of 24 hours.

Every seat in that fluorescent flooded subterranean room was packed with student playwrights and directors, boisterous, excited, a group that obviously spends a fair amount of time with one another. RedEye president Cory Tamler quickly called the meeting to order and the actors started filing in and firing off monologues, each 90 seconds long.

Time was at a premium, you understand.

Earl Haines kicked the auditions off with a spirited monologue about stealing spots off of giraffes ("Whoa, someone's excited..." whispered one of the playwrights) followed by another actor's rendition of Jake Gyllenhall's "I wish I could quit you" Brokeback Mountain speech, admittedly an oft-lampooned near punchline in itself.

So it was perhaps appropriate that immediately afterwards an actor actually delivered 90 seconds of original stand-up. There were snippets of Pinter, speeches from TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "The Vagina Monologues," Jules' speech from "Pulp Fiction," "Two Gentlemen of Verona," a spoken word rendition of Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" and a "piece of documentary drama" in the tradition of Jon Stewart's "Kids Reading the News"--in this case, a scene reenacted from an interview of President Bush by Brit Hume.

Ryan Howe, the actor channeling our President, broke character but once, for a half-chuckle through his description of the salutary effects of taking his dogs for walks on the South Lawn, though he managed to deliver the line nonetheless.

"Like a walk in the woods," he recited through a half-grin.

Immediately after the auditions, the writers followed casting director Sarah Heffner to the chalkboard at the end of the classroom to pick their actors. Each writer's name went up on the board followed by the names of their first choice actors. Each list was a sort of "Dream Team" used to start the horse-trading portion of the evening.

"I was told to fight to the death for Chris Maxwell," piped up Lily Junker, an actress acting as a casting agent for two absent playwrights, who were missing auditions to help out at another rehearsal.

"It's not me, it's them, seriously," she apologized.

Heffner advised the group that one actor was unable to make the rehearsal.

"Does everybody here know him? He's tall ... he has dark hair, he's diverse ... he has a dry subtle humour ..."

A pregnant pause followed.

"But he could be a clown," she amended her sales pitch, laughing, "but a subtle one."

"Suuubtle Clowwwnnnn ..." one writer sang out to more laughter.

"I want Chi-Chi," said Ryan McKelvey, and no one bothered to challenge this declaration, as he seemed so sure.

More back and forth compromising and market floor-style bidding and adjustment gave way to the end of the casting. There was a moment when it seemed the playwrights were wishing for more actors than they had available.

"It's fine," said Heffner, "we're just going to have to plug into the actor alternates a lot sooner than I thought, that's all."

After it was determined that each writer had at least one first choice, the playwrights spun off into the night to create their new realities, work their magic, and otherwise put text to page.

Their first draft deadline was 3 a.m.

Saturday morning brought an Oakland cityscape littered with odd clusters of straggling, St. Patty's Day revelers, still sporting green and finally making their ways back home. A bright and breezy day perhaps better spent out of doors.

But time was a-wasting, and back in the Cathedral Basement, in rooms from the 5th floor lounge back down to those basement classrooms beside the Studio Theatre, directors were working casts through their poppin' fresh scripts.

By 10:45, the cast of Chris Griswold's "The Halloween Between" were on stage in the Studio Theatre itself, running lines, mining character motivations, and conceiving as well as blocking actors' movements and set requirements. Simultaneously, of course. Technical crew members moved silently, hanging a spot light, skulking about the lighting booth and scaling catwalks with handfuls of gels, the colored filters for the stagelights.

Their black RedEye Theatre T-shirts bear red silk-screened print demanding, "What did you do last weekend?"

As castmembers Jessie Bishop, Kate Mickere and Howe (no longer playing our President) finished running their lines and stage business again, director Andy Keleman quick-loped his way from the risers to the stage, to advise his players.

"Can you get in closer? Not so much intimate, but closer. Lets ... lets's look at this. There is this notion that, or there should be this notion that, before you leave the two of you will be in tighter."

Howe averred that he could indeed get in closer and Keleman followed up with a demonstration of the sort of entrance he was expecting from the character--striding quickly from offstage to "surprise" Mickere and Bishop.

Then he was darting back up into the risers to observe another run through, adding "We've got eight minutes!" excitedly, as though it were all the time in the world.

In the classroom that had held auditions the previous evening, Regina Connolly was concentrating on blocking her actors stage movements. The moment found her somewhat puzzled, folded up on her perch, lips pressed together in thought.

"I'm really trying to figure out a reason for you guys to move," she pronounced slowly.

"Right now it's like too much, 'Hey: We're standing by a bucket."

She guided the actors through a few additional movements, dwelling on a more threatening exchange between actors Chris Maxwell and Luke Coryea.

"Be really, like street tough," she advised.

"Right now ... no, no, that looks like he's kissing your neck. Make it almost like he's spitting in your face, and use your upstage hand when you push him."

When they ran the next part of the script, where one actor is called upon to shove a slice of Wonder Bread in the mouth of the other, Maxwell observed:

"I'm actually more of a wheat fan."

"Good stuff," allowed Coryea, nodding.

Across the hall in the Studio Theatre, directing consultant Elena Alexandratos had materialized with advice for Junker, who was cast in "The Alluring Process" as a sexually inhibited young woman studying the allure of a window-bound go-go dancer.

"If you orchestrate it so that she is more judicious in her movements, we can vary that up a little," Alexandratos observed.

Junker nodded and thoughtfully retraced her steps.

Shortly thereafter, still in the Studio Theatre, Stacie Cifrulak ran her lines for "Begging and Pardoning," wearing an "I Survived the Oakland Riot" T-shirt. The perniciously amusing piece about a woman struggling with two avatars of past romance, paired Cifrulak first with Mike DeRensis, the stand-up comic from Friday's audition. When they dated, it seems he had been a weatherman.

"I'm forecasting a story," he tells her accusingly, "your story."

The interplay between the two was a Forrest Gump-ish ping-pong match of staccato hilarity. Onlookers guffawed. It was a perfect fit for DeRensis.

But then again, in whatever dark hour of the night Aaron M. Kern penned the script, he was doing so specifically for DeRensis-- a luxury for which most actors and playwrights would kill, but for today a privilege extended to everyone involved.

On the way out of the Cathedral, the smell of stale beer wafted evocatively through the air of Stairwell G. It was good to get back outside.

---

Stage Review: RedEye Theatre, 'Project: Proposterous'

By showtime the theatre was standing-room-only. In fact, the front row was actually squatting room only, as eager patrons--it is only $2 a ticket--simply gave up on finding seats and plopped themselves down in front of the risers.

Tamler and Heffner did introductions before curtain.

Tamler explained RedEye Theatre to the uninitiated and elaborated on how props were assigned to the playwrights to be incorporated in the scripts. The ticket prices had been discounted by a dollar and Heffner explained that the extra dollars could be contributed to a fund for her brother's unit in Iraq, as their barracks had burned down, destroying their personal effects.

Then the eight-part show began.

First was "The Halloween Between," a cute story of inchoate teenage romance. It was not so much an exploration of what was, as what was longed for, and, if glib, still mustered some nice ironic commentary and elicited enthusiastic and believably juvenile portrayals from the cast. The audience also quite enjoyed it; so much so that their laughter, which ramped raucously up for literally every joke, quickly bordered on obnoxious.

Mickere and company were followed by "The Alluring Process," where both Junker and Heffner did justice to the advice they received in practice with well-motivated and judicious movement. But the strength of the play remained in the rhetorical interplay between the two characters, one so believably mystified by her own feminine potential, the other so casually self-possessed she was at a loss to describe her own allure--despite it being her stock and trade.

"Begging and Pardoning" proved problematic, however. With such a strong script to work with but mere hours to memorize it, the difficulties proved lethal. Between obviously dropped lines and some pacing issues which rather jerked the narrative along, the best thing about the performance became the actors' determination to push on, forced to completely improvise at least two exchanges.

In what was the most, intentionally or not, heartwarming piece of the evening, James Wong's "Out of Your Eyes" uncovered the (unwittingly) overlapping secret lives of a New York couple. Grant Scavello really shined as a middling coke dealer, who proved to be much more than simply fulcrum of the plot, a protagonist in his own right.

After intermission, "The Not So Distant Wilderness" matched Wong's script in that a surprise contender for pivotal character emerged in unexpected form. The plot, following a pair of brothers on a coming-of-age, let's-drive-across-America roadtrip, is grandly tossed aside by a wicked, sentient waterway, played so memorably (by the gleefully evil and Rod Serling-like Tom Chun) and yet at the same time humorously (by two stage hands fluttering a length of blue cloth).

The audience was wild with applause after "Under the August Sunsphere," a tale compelling in its plot. It admittedly reeked of great near-contemporary films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "L.A. Confidential," albeit in a good way--but showcased strong performances all around. Even the most glaring error, a missed mark, which led to a monologue half-delivered four paces from its accompanying spotlight, was quickly improvised upon for a laugh, as every cue was deliberately missed thereafter.

The capstone of the presentation, "From the Gentleman Over There," was a true to life-behind-the-veil examination of what on earth moves men to long for what they cannot attain--in this case a beautiful young club frequenter, played by Carin Bendas, who delivered a three-plus minute monologue flawlessly while dancing the entire time, without either swallowing lines, losing voice projection, or getting out of breath.

As a night of one-acts, the RedEye Theatre project proved itself rather raw theatre. But considering the goals of the group and their self imposed restriction, there's no way to avoid being at least slightly impressed. That so much is done with so little preparation is remarkable, and as a bonus, offers invested theater-goers plenty to chew on.

While practice makes perfect, the purpose of the theater has never been to recreate or bottle a sort of synthetic reality, but instead, depending upon the skills of the artists involved, to create performances which resonate with implications for our real world.

To spend an evening seeing performances which are necessarily stripped of any number of trappings, from budget to multiple script revision, is to see some of the craft's artifice laid bare. It shines a spotlight on the one-way glass that normally cuts us off from the constructed elements of drama, the nuts and bolts. It is possible to rediscover some of what is so wonderful about the active suspension of disbelief, the understanding that we bring to the theatre, and witness an act of creation rather than regurgitation.

Raw theater like this is, in the end, just as good for audiences as for artists.