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The Double Shot Festival of Overnight Plays

Overnight delivery: Double Shot drops 'em like they're hot

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Ordinarily, writing a short play takes weeks or even months. As it moves into production, everyone from the cast to the director to the guy who delivers sandwiches has editorial input. What began with a clear authorial vision might veer off in any number of unexpected directions. The Double Shot Festival of Overnight Plays takes a different approach: it hands its writers a theme, about which they compose a 10-minute play over a single night. Then, at 8 the next morning, these scripts are passed to a director and cast of stock actors to be performed that very night, fully memorized, at 7:30.

The festival rehearses and first performs Saturday, April 13, followed by a matinée performance the next day at 2. The shows are hosted by Capital Playhouse, which just closed Oliver! and soon starts work on Legally Blonde: The Musical. The Double Shot Festival has been produced in Tacoma and points north since 2007. "We've been schlepping up I-5 for years," says Bryan Willis, playwright-in-residence of the Northwest Playwrights Alliance. His work includes pieces on BBC Radio and NPR. "We figured it was time to produce Double Shot in Olympia." It's part of an ongoing effort to foster new playwrights in the South Sound and to unite members of various companies in a fast-paced, collaborative enterprise. Willis organizes the festival by, as he says, "stomping out various production fires. In truth," he says, "it's a gloriously fun weekend."

"I've been waiting a long time for one of these. It's going to be great," says playwright Andrew Gordon. He'll pen one of six plays in the program, between recording sessions for his audio adaptation of Wind in the Willows, the live version of which premiered at Olympia Family Theater last fall. The other writers are Dan Erickson, Michael Kula, John Longenbaugh, Milo Mowery and Eva Suter.

More than 50 local actors and directors are taking part in the festival, including Timberland High drama guru Brenda Amburgy, Kathy Dorgan of Olympia High, Tim Hoban (Someone Who'll Watch Over Me), Kim and Russ Holm (Goodnight Moon), Elizabeth Lord (Reefer Madness), Mark Peterson (Titus Andronicus), Deane Shellman (Goodnight Moon) and Brian Tyrrell (Fiction). New offerings include not only the six short plays but also a song from Terry Shaw; three poems by Joanne Clarkson, Patty Kinney and Sarah Moses-Winyard; and a sketch by Muh Grog Zoo Improv Ensemble of Tacoma.

The festival uses minimal staging, but tickets are cheap and the cast is sure to be great. "It's a lot of fun," says Hoban, veteran of several Double Shot Festivals in Tacoma, "and some of the work is unbelievably good." When asked how he manages to get all his lines learned in only a few short hours, Hoban replies, "Lots of coffee."

CAPITAL PLAYHOUSE, THE DOUBLE SHOT FESTIVAL OF OVERNIGHT PLAYS, 7:30 P.M. SATURDAY, APRIL 13 AND 2 P.M., SUNDAY, APRIL 14, $13, 612 E. FOURTH AVE., OLYMPIA, 360.943.2744

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