For the 10th time, I took part as a writer in Overnight Sensations, the 24-hour play festival sponsored by Hollins University and Mill Mountain Theatre. I’ve also taken part in five other timed writing events at other theatres, so this was my 15th overall. Previous posts showed went what down on Friday night and Saturday by day. Now it’s time to talk about the show.

My first thought when I drew science fiction was something with aliens. And my first thought when I drew a setting in a cocktail lounge was something in Las Vegas or otherwise near Area 51 in Nevada. That also seemed too obvious to me, so I started thinking about other science fiction concepts that didn’t involve aliens. One was time travel. I was also intrigued about setting the show in a different time period and some unexpected place. When I met with the cast, I found that some could speak French. That led me to this: The owner of a cocktail lounge in Montreal is a devoted French royalist and has hired a mad scientist to bring back through time Dr. Guillotine, who inspired the device that now bears his name, in a bid to prevent the French Revolution. That mad scientist will use a piano, tuned to a frequency we can’t hear, to open a sonic door through time. The experiment works better than anyone thought: Not only does Dr. Guillotine appear, but so does Marie Antoinette, who proceeds to tell him how long a human head survives after it’s been severed from the body. I don’t normally write dark, but this is dark — another unexpected twist for my fans.

At 5 p.m., the groups returned to the main stage for a cue-to-cue walk-through — and I returned from my nap. I don’t have phots from the actual performance but I do have these:

Bryan Hancock as the bartender, Mary Jean Levin as the cocktail lounge owner, Sophia Menconi as the piano player, Mack Burns as the mad scientist.

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Renaissance Theatre in Lynchburg, Virginia produced “Revenge of the Fairy Queen” for three weekends in June 2023. Directed by Amber Carderelli, with Sarah Mandel as assistant director/stage manager and Tony Quaranta as production manager.

An awesome poster

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Chill Bucket Productions, based both in Seattle and Westchester County, New York, produced by 10-minute play SOMETIMES ELEPHANTS DIE STANDING UP, in July.