Hour Twenty-Two: Pressure's On

Above, the cast of "Spite Brought Us Together" does one final walk-through. Director Jim Lewis: "C'mon, c'mon, stay in character. We're running out of time."

Hour Twenty: Utterly Noir

"The Adventures of Another Dick Tracy" already looked promising when Ann Jankowski turned it in at 6am. But in the hands of director Scott Kickhaefer, from Highland Park High School in Topeka, the play has the potential to be one of the standouts in tonight's 24-Hour Plays.

Jankowski's script manages to be both tightly written and structurally ambitious, as it cuts back and forth between two sleazy private eyes and a pair of sisters who are trying to con them. Asa Walker, from Labette County High School, plays his fresh-faced good looks to real comedic effect, while Devon Rutledge, from Wichita Collegiate, shines as the smirking sidekick Baxy. Wichita Collegiate's Arianna Johnson and Caitlin Pratt round out the cast as the virtuous sister and the kleptomaniacal sexpot; both are outstanding. They're a boisterous bunch, but Kickhaefer has managed to channel their energy into bits of physical comedy that succeed in bringing Jankowski's script to life.

It's exciting to see these young actors, as tired as they are, thinking on their feet and giving each other direction. "You ever check out a girl before?" Walker asks Rutledge, sarcastically. "Try doing it like that."

Hour Fourteen: The Word Made Flesh

By 8am, each director is paired with one of his or her three top-ranked scripts. The directors gather up their casts and fan out into different corners of the Inge Theater, where they promptly launch into preliminary read-throughs. Above, even as Inge Center staff scramble to assign rehearsal rooms, members of two newly assembled casts begin scoping out the prop table and costume rack, jockeying for the right to choose their pieces first.


Each cast is allotted one hour of time rehearsing on the stage where they will be performing tonight. Inevitably, one cast has to draw the short straw, and mere minutes after they receive their scripts, the cast of "Spite Brought Us Together," by Danielle Roberts, begin to map out their blocking. Above, the cast of "What Is Imagination?" try to unravel the interplay of "real" and "pretend" worlds within their script. Without playwright Crystal Moon on hand to tease out some of the intricacies of the script, director Lea Shepard has to make a series of educated guesses based on her own knowledge and experience in the theater.


The cast of "Rainbows Don't Just Symbolize God's Covenant With Noah" runs lines in anticipation of their 11am stage call. During the writing of "Rainbows," playwright Aubrey Near tried out a number of different endings for the play, and the one that appears in the final version of the script just does not seem to be clicking with the show's cast. Director Kelly Webber ponders whether there might be a way to tweak the ending for tonight's performance, while staying true to Near's original intentions for the piece. It's a difficult balance to strike, and a valuable reminder of the fact that a play in print and a play as performed by living, breathing actors are two very different things.