Emily to write for Musical Edition of 24 Hr Plays: Viral Monologues
Kate Rockwell, Noah Galvin, Brittany O’Grady, More Join Musical Edition of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues September 22
BY DAN MEYER
SEP 22, 2020
Broadway alums Kate Rockwell and Noah Galvin, Little Voice star Brittany O’Grady, and more stage and screen favorites will appear in a musical edition of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues September 22, to commemorate the series' 20th episode. Pulitzer Prize winner James Lapine and Tony winner William Finn are among the writers and composers tapped to create new works.
The videos air beginning at 6 PM ET on IGTV and YouTube, with new ones released every 15 minutes. The monologues will be available to view on IGTV and online through September 26. While free to watch, donations are encouraged to support TDF’s Wendy Wasserstein Project, which pairs 24 high school students across the five boroughs with mentors working in the theatre.
Joining Rockwell, Galvin, and O’Grady, are Chad Burris, Dez Duron, Christopher Fitzgerald, Lora Lee Gayer, Nehal Joshi, Ginna Le Vine, L. Morgan Lee, Dee Roscioli, and Sydnee Winters.
The cast will perform original pieces written by Lapine, Eli Bolin, Mario Correa, Isabella Dawis, Kristoffer Diaz, Alex Edelman, Gordon Greenberg, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, Jon Kern, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, christopher oscar peña, and Jonathan Marc Sherman; and composed by Finn, Eli Bolin, Faye Chiao, Kirsten Childs, Ben Clark, Emily Gardner Xu Hall, Aimee Mann & Jonathan Coulton, Matthew McCollum, Erin McKeown, Joey Orton & Brad Silnutzer, Alan Schmuckler, and Libby Winters.
The process began September 21 at 6 PM, when actors shared orientation-style videos to allow the writers to get to know them better. By 7 PM, writers and actors were paired, and writers went to work crafting original pieces. Actors received their monologues this morning and will continue to film their performances throughout the day. The 24-hour cycle is completed with the launch of the first video at 6 PM.
Past editions of Viral Monologues have included “Fists Up/Underlying Conditions,” which raised money for Communities United For Police Reform. A collaboration on the intersection of COVID-19 and incarceration featured Rebecca Naomi Jones and André De Shields, while another challenged performers to present a musical monologue, with Daveed Diggs, John Gallagher, Jr., Sarah Steele, and more joining in.
The series is produced by Coleman Ray Clark and Madelyn Paquette with Mark Armstrong as The 24 Hour Plays' artistic director. This 20th installment was created in partnership with Gordon Greenberg, Kirsten Childs, and TDF's Wendy Wasserstein Project. The music supervisor is Mark T. Evans.