There are many ways to support the arts. You can ride your bike to Gallery Stroll venues and stand next to paintings while you adjust your outfit in your reflection in a storefront window. You can reply “I’m Attending” to Facebook event invites from acquaintances for their stand-up/poetry reading/start-up dance company/experimental theater company, and then find something else to do that night at the last minute.
You can also attend Plan-B Theatre Company’s annual SLAM event. It’s a fundraiser. There are drinks to buy.
Plan-B’s SLAM is a great concept, now in its eighth year. Five playwrights meet 23 hours prior to curtain and receive a big envelope with a list of actors and a set of parameters. They write all night and arrive at the Rose Wagner Center the next morning with fresh pages and crippling self-doubt. While those playwrights catch up on sleep, five directors take a gaggle of actors firmly in hand and work the infant scripts into something as close to stage-able shape as they can manage. The short plays are performed during hour 24, ready or not.
But that’s the fun part. You get to waltz in for the last hour or so and eat and drink, with the very real possibility of witnessing the total humiliation of a group of talented strangers. There’s also a high likelihood that something amazing and beautiful will be created, and you’ll be the lucky sod who was there for its one-night-only appearance.
Plan-B Theatre Company: SLAM @ Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway, 801-355-2787, May 7, 8 p.m., $25-$40. PlanBTheatreCompany.org, ArtTix.org
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