14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival has always been about making it up as you go along—theater people rehearsing, designing, and performing 14 short plays in 48 hours. It's a lot of theater with the lifespan of a mayfly. This year, they've added a new phase to the life cycle: criticism. I'll be at shows this weekend, live-reviewing the short plays in 14 words or 48 characters and posting them on Slog and the 14/48 blog.

7:23 pm

The final pep talk for everyone before they scuttle into the dressing rooms. The shows that have been made today will only be seen twice—at 8 and 10:30. (The 8 pm show is sold out; there are tickets left for the 10:30.) Someone says from the stage that the 8 pm show has opening-night energy and the 10:30 show has closing-night energy, and there's nothing in between. "If you feel tired," says Peter Dylan O'Connor, "raise the fucking stakes!" Much cheering.

7:34 pm

I'm ensconced in the light booth with a generous shot of theater juice. The band was practicing up until the very minute the house opened and the lighting designers are still sussing out lighting details. Some of our artists this weekend, many of whom are probably quietly losing their shit right now—Kaleb Hagan Kerr, Stephanie Timm, Kate Jaeger, Paul Mullin, Juliet Waller Pruzan, MJ Seiber, Jaime Roberts, Carter Rodriquez, Rhonda J. Soikowski...

The theme is "headin' down south." As a half-Southerner, I'm curious how long I'll be able to go without getting into high dudgeon over some low blow or abused cliche. As soon as I walked in the door this afternoon, I heard the band practicing the dueling banjos theme from "Deliverance"—so I'm guessing it won't take long.

And now we begin the 14-word reviews...

8:12 pm

Opening remarks by Matthew Richter.

Review: “The road to salvation is paved with risk”—so is the road to misery.

Duck/Penguin: written by Doug Willott; directed by Amy Poisson; starring Kaleb Hagan Kerr, Allison Standley, Matthew Middleton, and Tonya Andrews.

Review: Migrating ducks get lost, meet swinger penguins—four birds “passing the egg.” Surprisingly sexy.

Dream Come True: written by Juliet Waller Pruzan; directed by Meghan Arnette; starring Paul Mullin, Keith Dahlgren, and Samie Detzer.

Review: Good script—well-dweller wants to meet Elvis. Russian accents, didn’t exactly rush their performance.

The Descent: written by Eric Lane Barnes; directed by Kate Jaeger; starring Bobby Temple, Daniel Chercover, Ryan Higgins, and Harry Todd Jamieson.

Review: Three boys explore “cave.” Script coasts on entendre—actors and “clitoris” design are aces.

(To cheat: I wish I had more than 14 words for this one. One of the boys meets "the little man in the boat," who tells him how to lick: "I am NOT a popsicle!" This 14-word thing is insanely restrictive. Next time, I want 48 words.)

The Procedure: written by Celene Ramadan; directed by Jaime Roberts; starring Alexander Samuels, Carter Rodriquez, Katie Driscoll, Sara Mountjoy-Pepka, and Rhonda J. Soikowski.

Review: Parents crash daughter’s genital waxing. Pink plaid pants and “Hitler’s mustache” joke upstage everything.

Terrible Hostess: written by Stephanie Timm; directed by Rob Raas-Berquist; starring Lyam White, Helen Harvester, Christine White, and Aimee Bruneau.

Review: Hostess snack-cakes murder Little Debbie. Hoped it’d be funny, then hoped it’d be over.

The goodwill is permeating everything here, so I feel like a bastard for writing such things. But they asked a critic into the room...

The Fortune Teller: written by Daniel Tarker; directed by Andy Jensen; starring Renata Friedman and Brandon J. Simmons.

Review: Panhandler gives relationship advice for booze money. Strangely, not titled “the Dan Savage story.”

Downsizing: written by MJ Seiber; directed by Tim Moore; starring Michael Patten, Trick Danneker, Sam Hagen, Lisa Branham, and Libby Barnard.

Review: Hilarious script about vengeful, laid-off officeworkers. Explosive conclusion—poop and fruit on CEO. Marvelous.

Fourteen words! For every review! But I’ve given absolutely everything short shrift tonight—that 14-word limitation is a bitch.

Being a sonuvabitch critic, I'd prepped some terse, boilerplate insults this afternoon—but the show was so good, I only had to use one. The rest that I'd prepped, just in case:

That sketch wasn't worth its carbon footprint.

They're doing this show twice tonight—but once was enough.

The X stood for Y. The audience stood for more than it should've.

Too bad the curtain had to be open.

Good night!