Six playwrights, two dozen actors and one day (and night) to make theater: It’s ‘The 24 Hour Plays’

The all-nighter may be a collegiate rite of passage fueled by vending machine snacks and stale coffee, but this weekend six professional playwrights will willingly set aside their sensible adult schedules to stay up all night and write, write, write.

These writers, along with six directors and 24 actors, will work around the clock with the Cornerstone Theater Company in L.A. to create and develop six original, short plays in just 24 hours. The Saturday staging of these plays at the Moss Theater in Santa Monica serves as Cornerstone’s largest fundraising event of the year.

Creating and producing six plays in 24 hours is a gimmick, but one that has proven remarkably successful. Conceived as a one-off event in New York in the mid-1990s, the concept has grown into a company. In collaboration with partnering theaters, the organization now produces star-studded 24 Hour Plays worldwide.

The night before a performance, the actors arrive with a prop of their choosing to present to the group. The writers use the actors’ props as inspiration for the 10-minute plays they then write overnight. The directors and actors get the scripts the next morning, rehearse all day and present the plays exactly 24 hours after the process began.

Mark Armstrong, executive director of the 24 Hour Company, says the concept is more than shtick. “Come for the stunt, stay for the artistic depth,” he says. “In addition to it being this sort of crazy, high-wire act, the level of artistic depth that people are capable of is what’s really extraordinary.”

Armstrong met playwright Michael John Garcés, Cornerstone Theater’s artistic director, when they participated in a 2003 production of “The 24 Hour Plays.”

“Garcés was one of the first legit off-Broadway directors to sign on to do ‘The 24 Hour Plays’ in the early days,” Armstrong says. “From the moment I came onboard here, I wanted to do a show with Michael and with Cornerstone.”

Cornerstone’s production will be unusual because the company is unusual. “We’re a community-engaged theater company,” Garcés says. “We work with both professional actors and non-professionals. [That combination] will make this production a very particular Cornerstone ‘24 Hour Play’ experience.”

Garcés, who has participated in “24 Hour Plays” as a writer and a director, says even though the entire production is an extraordinary feat, the writers have the toughest job.

“You’re just staring at the eternal night,” he says. “You have to create something from scratch on this really tight deadline, and you’re not going to sleep until you do.”

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“The 24-Hour Plays”

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: The Moss Theater at the Herb Alpert Educational Village at New Roads School, 3131 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica

Tickets: $150

Info: (213) 613-1700, www.cornerstonetheater.org

Follow The Times’ arts team @culturemonster.