The cast of 24-Hour Musical visits No Limits, an organization that works with deaf children in the L.A. area. The musical’s proceeds benefit the organization.
Courtesy of SAM CARDONA
Actors run on stage with scripts, some forget their lines, and others just improvise. Putting together a musical in 24 hours may not be perfect, but that’s not what matters to them ““ they want to have fun.
This is the idea that the cast and crew of Hooligan Theater Company and Act III Theatre Ensemble will embrace on Sunday as they take the stage for the fourth annual 24-Hour Musical.
“Half of the fun of the musical is watching it fall apart because we have only rehearsed it so many times,” said Jen Fingal, a third-year theater studies student and managing director of Act III.
The annual production is created entirely in the 24 hours before the show. Previous shows have included “Grease,” “Guys and Dolls” and “Bye Bye Birdie.”
“It is an incredible adrenaline rush for everyone to find out what the show is that night,” said Joan Cummins, a fourth-year theater student and one of the directors of the show.
Cummins and Hunter Bird, a third-year directing and musical theater student, will direct the musical this year. This is the second time Cummins will direct the production.
The script is chosen and cast months prior to the 24-hour preparation time. The musical and roles are kept secret from the cast and crew until the night before the performance.
Fingal said that when choosing a musical for the night, the planning team looks at three criteria: It must be well-known, fun and have a large cast. This year’s production will include more than 30 cast members, according to Fingal.
Auditions for the production, which were in October, were open to students of all majors. According to Richie Ferris, a fourth-year statistics and theater student and Act III cast member, having the auditions ahead of time gives the cast and crew plenty of time to fundraise for No Limits Theatre Group, the organization that will benefit from the proceeds of the evening.
“No matter what our background is, we are all going into this show together,” Ferris said.
Ferris is one of a few students who have participated in the 24-Hour Musical since it started in 2008. This will be his fourth year acting in the annual production.
The evening’s proceeds will benefit No Limits, an organization that works with children from lower income families who are deaf or hard of hearing in the L.A. area. In previous years, the musical has raised around $8,000 each year, according to Fingal.
According to Michelle Christie-Adams, a first-year doctoral student in the Educational Leadership Program and founder of No Limits, the money the theater groups raise will help tremendously with the program, which aims to help children develop language and speech skills through theatrical arts and individual therapy.
No Limits’ program has limited space ““ room for about 45 children at a time, which leaves more than 350 children on the wait list for therapy.
“Our donation will hopefully get one or two of the kids off the wait list,” Fingal said.
This year the cast of the production actually went to the No Limits center to meet with the children before the show. Ferris said it was a great experience to actually get to meet the kids.
According to Adams, the children loved meeting the cast members and playing theater games. She said that some of the cast members she had spoken to planned on volunteering at the facility in the future.
The theater groups chose to do something new for the production this year and give each cast member a sponsor child. According to Fingal, the idea was to bring the musical closer to the cause than it has been in previous years.
“It’s nice to feel like we are making some sort of difference in our community,” Fingal said.