Creating a show in 24 hours: Fast, furious fun raises funds

It’s a fund-raising idea that could have come straight from the imagination of the fun-loving vicar of Dibley, Geraldine Granger, herself.

To raise money for their theatre in Manningtree, Essex, the Manifest Theatre Group challenged themselves to create a stage production of the much-loved TV series, The Vicar of Dibley, within a 24-hour period: from handing out scripts and rehearsing actors in their roles, to costuming the cast and building a set, as well as organising the technical aspects.

And the group pulled it off a few weeks ago on 9 June: “I was just amazed – they did such an amazing job and I’m so proud of them,” said Alison Baker, director of The Manifest Mini Fest and chair of the Manifest Theatre Group of her cast and crew. “But by the time we finished the second performance, we were absolutely on our knees!”

Back to the beginning: a group member brought the concept of ‘a show in 24 hours’ to the Manifest committee as a potential fundraiser and the idea caught on quickly. “I thought it was a brilliant idea and I wanted to run with it, but we needed to find something to do,” Baker said. “So, we came up with the idea of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ because we wanted to do something that was really good fun.”

However, attempting to stage a full-length play from start to finish in 24 hours was problematic, “and would have been a bit too much,” Baker conceded. Instead of the full-length play, the Manifest group decided to seek performing rights for episodes of the TV series. The holder of the TV rights, Tiger Aspects Productions, was contacted, “and we badgered and badgered them”, Baker recalled, “and I think nearly drove them mad!”

In the end, Tiger Aspects provided the rights, and at a very low fee, for two performances of a package of two episodes. “The episodes were only 28 minutes long, so it meant that once you’ve got (stage) business in and everything, each part was only going to last 35 or 40 minutes at most onstage,” Baker said. Then, it was time to cast the show. For this production, Baker pre-cast the show, “because I needed people that could learn lines quickly and people whose minds I could trust. They actually knew which parts they were playing, but they didn’t know which episodes we were doing.” Knowing who they would be portraying helped the actors familiarise themselves with the characters’ signature traits before getting into the hotbed of rehearsals.

The 24-hour marathon called for an overnight stay at their Victorian theatre for only a few hours of kip and rehearsals late into the night and early into the morning, all for the adult cast. Several children who appeared in the show had the enviable luxury of an early night and their beds at home. At the same time as the adults were going over their scripts and their scenes, the set builders and tech crew were doing their parts to ready the show’s various ‘locations’ for a 2pm performance. Their second performance started at 5.30pm, with the marathon finally ending about 7pm.

In all, Manifest earned about £3k for themselves, made a donation to Comic Relief and left their appreciative audiences laughing. Asked if she would want to do such a project again, Baker said, “It was really good fun, it was just really great and I don’t think it would be something we ever forget…But not for a couple of years!”

 

 

How to stage a show in 24 hours

Making a success out of staging a show in 24 hours is “all in the planning,” advised Alison Baker of the Manifest Theatre Group. “The planning was quite huge. As I was directing, I had planned exactly what was going to happen at each stage of that 24 hours, so we knew what we were doing. If you didn’t, you could get in a terrible muddle really.” Part of Baker’s planning was pre-casting her actors, along with lining up her tech director and team, many of whom usually carry out those roles with the group’s regular productions. The planning had to extend to how cast and crew would be fed during the 24 hours and knowing what kind of costuming was on hand. “Obviously, you can’t do anything until the 24-hour period starts, but you have to sort of pull everything out and then make sure everything fits.”