The 24 Hour Plays—a theater company—was launched in October 1995 in a Lower East Side basement. Company founder Tina Fallon took inspiration from Scott McCloud’s 24 Hour Comics—books he wrote in just one day. She enlisted playwrights around the world to feverishly write works, cast actors, and stage the productions just one time. When the coronavirus hit in March 2020, the concept went virtual. In the last two years, on its Instagram and YouTube pages, the company has featured over 400 brief monologues from writers like Jesse Eisenberg and Lily Padilla and actors Tavi Gevinson and Rachel Dratch. A recent highlight is a seven-minute monologue written by AIR MAIL Editor at Large George Pendle. Performed and self-taped by Nicholas Webber in what seems to be a small closet, the scene looks at a songwriter who rejects his agent’s ridiculous suggestion to turn a six-word story by Ernest Hemingway into a full-length musical. Once he hears about the payday, he gets writing. —Jensen Davis