9 local teams to face-off in PlayOffs

Nine teams will compete for nine innings during four nights to win the pennant. But this isn’t baseball – it’s theater.

Teams of playwrights, directors and actors will compete this weekend to create the best original play with about 24 hours of preparation for the sixth-annual Ike and Julie Arnove PlayOffs, a Bloomington Playwrights Project production with a baseball twist.

“It adds a cohesive theme to the overall show,” BPP Managing Director Gabe Gloden said. “It encourages the idea that this is a fun, light-hearted event.”

A press conference for the event will be at 6:30 p.m. Friday  at BPP. About 50 artists, including managers or playwrights, coaches or directors and players or actors, will gather to await the first pitch from Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan, who will deliver the PlayOffs’ theme, a prop and a line of dialogue.

After the announcement, randomly assigned teams of a director, a playwright and two or three actors will form and discuss writing an original play. The playwright will then write the script, which has a page limit and must incorporate the given prop and the line of dialogue.

In previous years, props have included a plastic hamster tube, a metal bucket and a cow bell.

“If you are inspired or enjoy rampant creativity, this is one of the best shows out there,” Gloden said.

The plays will each be seven to 10 minutes long. IU graduate student and playwright Rachael Himsel, who has competed in the PlayOffs three times before, said writing a 10-minute play usually might take two weeks.

She added that writing the script overnight can be very stressful and said every year she thinks she will finish in a few hours, but ends up staying awake all night.

“You realize you have to have an ending to give the actors in the morning,” she said.

The teams will meet S aturday to read over the scripts for the first time and then rehearse all day. Each team will have about an hour on stage to rehearse, Gloden said. He said the theater is similar to a madhouse.

“You’ll have plays rehearsing right next to each other,” Gloden said. “It’s somewhat distracting, but exciting at the same time because you get to see what others are doing. ... It’s not how any other rehearsal process would go.”

All nine plays will be performed nightly, starting at 8 p.m. Saturday. All proceeds will go to support the theater’s mission to create American plays and to help fund its main stage plays. The same plays will take place Sunday and Oct. 30 and 31, giving the actors more time to refine their work.

Gloden said the later plays will be the same, but better because they will be more well-rehearsed.

Each night, the audience will vote for the MVP, or best actor, and will choose the best play to be declared the pennant-winner. The votes will be tallied after the final performance on Halloween night.

Audience members are encouraged to come in costumes and stay afterward for a costume party.

Tracy Bee, who has both written and directed in previous PlayOffs, will be a playwright again this year. She said the event is exciting because no one has any idea if the plays will be good or bad.

She said it’s usually a combination of wonderful and horrible.

“It’s like someone juggling fire,” she said. “It could end up really badly, or it could be really beautiful.”