I was recently invited to write a monologue for 24 Hour Plays’ #24viralmonologues project they have been running since COVID-19 has kept us all locked up inside.
The way the project works: Each week they select a group of playwrights and actors. After matching them up the actors record a short video giving some idea of what they are capable of pulling off in their given circumstances. Some actors are living in the country and have access to gardens and trees and sky. Others are cooped up inside apartments in their respective cities. Playwrights are given these videos at 6pm and have until 9am the following morning to write a 5 minute (give or take) monologue. The actor then must memorize and record the monologue however they see fit.
I was assigned the actor Ben Ahlers, a theatre and TV actor who already has a ton a credits despite only being out of school a couple years. He’s a big talent and I was lucky to be matched with him. In Ben’s intro video he made some suggestions of things he could pull off (he lives in a NYC apartment). He mentioned a guitar and a park across the street, which I took as inspiration to write a piece about a street musician trying hard to stay positive during this crisis.
The lineup for this week’s monologues included some playwrights I’ve long admired, including Laura Eason, Rebecca Gilman, Itamar Moses, and David Lindsay-Abaire, Donald Margulies, and so many others. The lineup of actors was just as stacked.
You can watch the piece I wrote here:
The archive of all the others at this link.
Support 24 Hour Plays if you can with a donation at this link.