Coming to theatres nationwide for one night only tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30: ONE NIGHT STAND
Elisabeth Sperling and Trish Dalton’s behind the scenes look at the creative process made its world premiere at NewFest in 2011, where it also picked up the documentary audience award. Its festival circuit has since included Austin, Denver, Miami, RiverRun, Nashville, and Image Out, among others.
Featuring a celebrity cast familiar to fans of television and the stage, including Cheyenne Jackson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Rachel Dratch, and Richard Kind, and talented musical writers, composers, and directors, Sperling and Dalton’s fun and engaging film follows their attempts to create four original short musicals for a benefit performance in the span of 24 hours. All of the participants meet at 8pm, split up into teams, and begin throwing out ideas to create their individual fifteen minute pieces, which will premiere at 8pm the next day for the one-night-only benefit. Dalton and Sperling jump between the four groups, tracing the frenetic development of their vignettes, from blank page to initial ideas, from casting to rehearsals to final performance. The time constraints bring out a range of emotions, from adrenaline-fueled excitement to abject terror, as the infectious project offers the audience a window into creativity across a number of disciplines, pushed to the limits.
what (not) to doc 