It’s difficult to communicate the experience of watching Theatre Unbound’s “24:00:00 Xtreme Theatre Smackdown.” I was entertained by this new incarnation of the feminist company’s popular annual event, the 24-Hour Play Project. From what I could tell, everyone in Saturday’s audience for the one-night-only show enjoyed the silliness and scrappy, low-fi spectacle of the evening’s shenanigans. The “Smackdown,” like the 24-Hour Play Project, carries a whiff of both game show and variety hour, which makes sense, given the show’s origins in 2001 as the centerpiece of the company’s yearly fundraiser.

Here’s how it works: actors, directors and playwrights (this year there were 40 participants in all) divide into teams, each of which has just 24 hours to create and stage a short play— from writing, casting, and rehearsal to public performance. These teams must also incorporate a set of givens and plot elements, submitted and selected through an open online vote of audiences and theater folks.

The crowd-sourced “ingredients” for this year were: a prom dress, a short dance break, some sort of “xtreme sports” reference, an element of “concealed delight” and this line of dialogue: “Consistency’s a hobgoblin. It’ll steal your pants.”

The resulting six sketches in this year’s “Smackdown” were by turns (sometimes, at once) clever and ridiculous: one girl’s 18^th birthday party reveals a hidden bloodthirsty side of “Minnesota Nice,” a roller derby queen finds herself transported to the royal court of 18^th century France, a pair of sisters make like Buffy on a camping trip in a monster-filled forest, mother-daughter grifters go “promsurfing,” a family finds breaking up hard to do, a couple re-enacts conflicting accounts of their first date. A masked and Spandex-clad (but otherwise pretty mild-mannered) “Crushinator the Corset Buster” served as emcee, introducing the acts and warming up the crowd, aided by her gum-smacking, applause sign-carrying assistant, Maddie “the Baddie.”

It’s like “Iron Chef: Thespians’ Edition,” but with a wrestling theme and less actual competition.

Truth be told, you don’t go to something like this and expect Shakespeare. Nonetheless, amid the hammy excesses and cheeky good fun were moments of genuine and surprising chemistry on stage, real heart or exceptional wit. And speaking of Shakespeare, Theatre Unbound has an all-female production of “Julius Caesar” coming up in a couple of months. While this weekend’s competitive play-acting may have been more party than performance, the evident talent of those involved makes me curious to see what they do with the meatier fare they have planned for this spring.

To find out more about Theatre Unbound, or to keep track of future performances, visit their website: http://www.theatreunbound.com/.