Twelve Little Steps Closer to the Big Time : A study in the small scale, OCC Repertory takes on ’24 Hours A.M.,’ 10-minute playlets for 12 student directors to exercise walking before they run.

COSTA MESA —  An old axiom says a novel is easier to write than a short story. It follows then that a three-act play would be easier to write than a one-acter.

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Take the exercise one step further. Limit a one-act to 10 minutes, and you provide the playwright with great problems. Within that brief time he has to present a complete story, beginning, middle and end, and make it all dramatically and theatrically effective.

That was the assignment in playwright Oliver Hailey’s Playwrights Lab at Van Nuys’ Back Alley Theatre in 1981. The result was “24 Hours A.M.” and “24 Hours P.M.,” two evenings of plays that not only fit into the length and dramatic strictures placed on the writers, but each play had to deal with a specific time of day.

Four years ago, Orange Coast College’s student-directed Repertory presented “24 Hours P.M.” Beginning tonight, the troupe completes the journey around the clock with its presentation of “24 Hours A.M.,” 12 playlets with 12 playwrights’ visions of what happens between midnight and noon.

OCC teacher Alex Golson, who heads the Repertory season, said the project is very good for his students for several reasons.

“We’re trying to get away from one student directing one main-stage play,” Golson said, “because not enough students were getting opportunities to direct. We’ve decided that each semester we’re going to do one of this type of show.”

There are a number of plays that fit into the category of a group of playlets under an umbrella theme, including “The Bar off Melrose” and the many plays that have been produced in the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 10-minute play competition.

Such brevity is sometimes daunting, even for experienced playwrights. Before assigning the “24 Hours” project to his professional workshop, Hailey had set the writers on their heels with the assignment to write the first five minutes of a full-length play. When the writers balked and asked why, Hailey explained that if you don’t have your audience’s attention in the first five minutes, you’ll never get it.

The challenge rolls over onto the shoulders of the directors, who must make a viable theatrical entity out of a small piece of dramatic cloth.

Regarding the student directors in Golson’s project, he said, “They all want to do these big epics, but I tell them to start with these. Where you really learn your craft is with a two-character play that deals with relationships. Do that first, then we’ll deal with ‘The Royal Hunt of the Sun.’ . . . They need to get back to the basics, instead of worrying about all this costuming and everything else. You need to learn to walk before you can run.”

There’s another strong practical reason behind the project. In today’s professional-theater world, young directors usually find themselves working in small off-off-Broadway theaters and the many small theaters in Los Angeles, doing plays with six characters or less. Usually two or three.

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Golson tries to instill these restrictions even with the members of OCC’s playwriting class.

“When you’re writing plays today,” Golson said, “if you’re interested in getting them sold, you’ve got to write for theaters that can produce them. They’ll look for how many sets there are, how many people they’ll have to hire and all that.”

As enthusiastic as the directors have gotten since getting involved with the short plays, the playwrights found it equally inspiring. When offered a choice of projects, they opted for a further stretching of the idea behind “24 Hours”: 12 plays, each 10 minutes long, each describing one month during the year.

That project will require the same inventiveness called for by the spare ingredients of “24 Hours A.M.”

“There’s a bed, a table and chairs,” Golson said. “And a black wall. I like minimalist theater: the actor and the audience. We get too preoccupied with sets, lights and costumes. You don’t always get that. This is the best kind of training, because they’re going to go to these little theaters that have no budgets and nothing to draw from. They’re going to have to become self-reliant.”

* “24 Hours A.M.” opens tonight in the Drama Lab Studio, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Performances Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 30. $5. (714) 432-5932.