From Page to Stage in a Day: Lebanon Residents Behind the Upper Valley’s “24-Hour” Play

After a successful first year, the Upper Valley 24-Hour Play Fest was back this September, held at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, and organized by Lebanon residents Rachael Thomeer and Molly Raposa. What is a 24-hour Play Festival? Great question! It’s just what it sounds like: 24 hours for participants to audition, write, direct, rehearse, and then perform short plays in just one calendar day.

With the festival beginning at 7pm on a Friday night, the actors audition (everyone is cast), and the writers stay overnight to work on their plays until the wee hours of the morning, when they then head home for some sleep. On Saturday morning, the directors and actors arrive to review scripts and hold the casting session, and then the tech crew arrives, rehearsals take place, and a performance begins to take shape. By 7pm Saturday night, the plays begin – six ten-minute plays – written, rehearsed, and performed in just 24 hours, and never seen before by any other audience. The Play Fest’s theme this year was “The Day Everything Changed”.

Upper Valley 24-Hour Play Fest Producers: Molly Raposa, Aaron Richter, Rachael Thomeer, Loriston Fennell

I met with two of the four producers to ask them some questions – Rachael Thomeer and Molly Raposa. Rachael has a background in community building, social events, and theater, and she served on the board of the Upper Valley Young Professionals. Having participated in a couple of play festivals in college, she had a vision of bringing such an event to the Upper Valley when she moved here in 2021, with the goal of inviting people from the broad community to come together for a fun, low-barrier, all-inclusive experience. She explained that the small time commitment (of 24 hours) helps make the event accessible to many, and the aspects she looks forward to the most are the camaraderie and team-playing of the participants who all work to bring the plays to life.

Eliza, UV 24-Hour Play Fest actress

Outside of organizing the Play Fest, Rachael also works in the box office at the Lebanon Opera House, and she loves how walkable downtown Lebanon is. “I like walking on the Rail Trail, going to the summer farmers’ market, and visiting the downtown businesses (Katie’s Cookies is my favorite!),” she said.

Molly also has a theater background, having majored in theater management and participating in play festivals at college as a director. She gave a shout out to the “Upper Valley Ladies 20s and 30s” group on Facebook, which is where she was first introduced to Rachael last year and joined in her mission to hold annual play festivals for the Upper Valley.

Both Rachael and Molly live in Lebanon, and “The festival has always been rooted in Lebanon,” Rachael said. “Since its founding, we’ve always had at least half of our production team live in Lebanon.” A few of the actors this year hail from Lebanon, too.

Even though the event itself is only 24 hours long, the producers and collaborators – all of whom are volunteers – work on making this event possible for months. In the months of planning leading up to the festival, the producers met at libraries in Lebanon and Hanover to plan the event. Rachael said that she sometimes forgets that the UV 24-Hour Play Fest is a real thing that an audience is coming to watch: it’s “not real until it’s real,” she said, and “it’s so short it feels like a dream.”

“It’s exciting and so nerve wracking at the same time,” Molly explained. “We are so heavily involved, and on the day-of, we’re starting to pass [what we’ve worked on] off to other people [actors].” She expressed how exhilarating the leap of faith and trust feels in passing their idea over to the Play Fest participants and seeing what they come up with over such a short period of time.

As far as this kind of event being a valuable part of the community, they both had a lot to say. Rachael said that this kind of event brings people together, especially during a time when social ties have disintegrated in recent years. “We really try to be inclusive and welcoming,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to let people try new things, and I think that’s just really empowering for them…We want to offer a low barrier of entry, and we want to make it really low stakes.” The first priority is that “we want everyone to have fun, feel safe, and be comfortable,” she added. “Our second thing is that [we] put on a good show. We really care about our [audience and actors] and their experience.”

Aran Eagle (L), director and Talon Eagle (R), actor

Molly said, “we’re just so passionate about bringing accessible art to the Upper Valley.” A 24-Hour Play Fest is a unique niche that is “awesome for the community.” A lot of people don’t want to make a big commitment (time wise), but still want to be involved in theater, and the Play Fest provides a great, low-commitment opportunity for them. “And, if you walk away from the day wanting to get more involved in the local theater scene at all of our amazing local arts venues, that’s awesome, and that’s a win for us,” Molly added.

This event is all-inclusive, no experience necessary, and come as you are, with some participants trying it for the first time, while others may have a background in theater and acting. Everyone gets to participate and share in the collaborative process, making it a rewarding and community-building experience.

As far as any changes since last year’s event, there were a few notable things. The auditions used to happen the morning-of, after the writers had written the plays. However, not knowing the demographics of the actors ahead of time, they wrote plays that were not necessarily written with specific demographics in mind, such as more kid-friendly scripts. This year, they had the writers watch the auditions, so they had a better idea who they were writing for, and this made a big difference. They learned a lot about the venues as well. Last year, they held the first Play Fest at Parish Players, and it was such a huge success; not only did they have to turn away participants because of lack of space, but the festival sold out! So, this year they found a larger space and ended up having over double the number of participants – 60 participants in total, with the number of children increasing and even a couple of families joining the mix.

Eliza, an 11-year-old participant, said this was her first play festival experience, though she has been involved with plays in the past at camp and was in

A Christmas Carol at Northern Stage. What excites her most about this event is the pressure of it. “I work best when I’m under stress,” she said. “This is really motivating but also scary, in a good way.” She thinks this is a valuable part of the community because it “causes a lot of people who share the same interests to come together and meet new people, and share their passion,” she said.

Fauve Dela Cruz, actress

Alexander Bulova, one of the co-directors who participated in 24-hour play festivals back in college, said that the most challenging aspect of the event is having only 24 hours to pull everything together. He is very used to coming into rehearsal having already done the blocking and preparation, and you don’t have that kind of time with the 24-Hour Play Fest. “This is really an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and just work in the moment, learn with the actors, and discover stuff in the moment, which is really valuable,” he said. He explained that it’s important to keep things fresh for the performers, and that you don’t want them to “over act” and be tired by show time. “You want a little bit of uncertainty before you go on stage, because that’s where the acting and the magic comes from, is working with that audience and discovering stuff in the moment.” Also, the format removes barriers between the different roles, and everyone comes together. “This is a great opportunity for people to step out of their day-to-day lives and their jobs and just have fun.”

Play Fest actor Rawan Bresselsmith, from Lebanon, is new to acting, though you would never know; she is such a natural! Her background in ballet lends to her familiarity with stage performance, and part of her studies in medical school require some role playing. This was her first time taking part in a play festival, and she explained that the most challenging aspect of a ten-minute play is learning to memorize lines. And, in their play, they had a few scenes taking place all at once, which made it a challenge to stay focused on her next line. “This is a great way to meet people that I otherwise never would have crossed pathways with,” she said. “Coming together to do something collectively challenging is so fun…this is the essence of teamwork.”

Fauve Dela Cruz, another actor, said this is her second year involved with a play festival. What excites her most is “how it is so uncertain, and we have no idea what the outcome is going to be,” she said. “Everyone is obviously pushing to their best, but there’s no pressure to make it perfect…You literally have no time to get into your head, you’ve just gotta do it and go for it, and that’s the beauty of this whole thing that everyone’s going for…because you’re only doing it once.”

“It requires a lot of different people of different abilities, and so it pulls from all these different areas of the community,” Fauve added. “It will pull people from all walks of life…This is such a great entry-level way of getting into it and getting your feet wet and seeing if you like it, versus a huge commitment for a full production.”

Rawan Bresselsmith (L) and Jane Svindrychova (R), both UV 24-Hour Play Fest actresses.

Talon Ansteth heard about the UV 24-Hour Play Festival from his partner, who participated as a director. He was planning on being an usher, until someone dropped out from acting and he decided to audition. He participated for a number of years with the “Arts In Reach” program in Durham, Nh, and this really piqued his interest and involvement in theater.

What excited Talon most is that, “from the group that I’ve been in, they’re very inclusive, and they understand that I can’t do a lot of things, and they’re really helping me express myself in the play itself.”

You might not think it takes long to put something like this together, but there is always more behind the scenes than we ever imagine. It takes months to find just the right space, the sponsors and partners that come together to make this possible, the creative marketing, and all the thoughtful coordination. The four producers, including Molly, Rachael, Loriston Fennell, and Aaron Richter (who is the music director/organist and admin assistant at the West Lebanon Congregational Church), all volunteered their time, energy, and effort to make this happen. And, at the end of the night, a successful, exciting show that left me with such enthusiasm that I just might have to participate next year myself!