At the 24-hour Plays Celebrity Benefit, if someone holds up a handmade sign that says “Brooke Shields” as a joke, chances are Brooke Shields herself is lurking somewhere in the wings. Coming together this Monday to support “Working Playground,” a charity that sends artists into New York City schools, familiar faces from Matthew Lillard to Lili Taylor came together to produce six short shows from soup-tonuts in a lickety-split 24 hours.

Starting at midnight on Monday, playwrights like Warren Leight (“Sideman”) and David Lindsay-Abaire (“Fuddy Meers”) had six hours to write a 10-minute play, writing specifically for the superstar actors they had chosen. Early the next morning, directors picked their shows, rehearsed, and produced the mini-masterworks – all in eight hours. (If you were Trip Cullman and your cast was flying in from Toronto, you had six.)

Lindsay Bowen, one of many producers, has been doing this for nearly a decade, and, if all goes well, may soon start making money at it. “We really should take ourselves seriously like a grown-up company,” he says. But grown-up or not, the team of producers have the action down pat. Despite jittery actors, needing to fill the massive American Airlines theater, and hearing a “yes” from director Marion McClinton literally from his hospital bed, Mr. Bowen says there really weren’t many fires to put out.

Considering the smoothly running machine that welcomed Monday’s audience, he may not have been kidding. You couldn’t swing a cat without whacking a “title sponsor” – Details Magazine, Bloomingdales, the W Hotel, Moxie Pictures, and Planet Impact were all in on the gig. From them came a lot of dazzle and dash – they’ve got the right people “on the door,” and they filled row after row of the American Airlines Theater with deep pockets, nicely lined.

Possibly the best-appreciated gift came from the W Hotel, which put the writers up in splendid style for their all-night marathon. Playwright Christopher Shinn, used to starving picturesquely in service to his art, finally got to don a waffled robe and eat filet mignon (pink) on the job.

While the writers got star treatment, the stars themselves got the “down town” end of the stick. Shoehorned into rehearsal “spaces,” some of which might better be described as “the hallway beside the elevators,” they plowed through pages of dialogue without a craft services table in sight. Based on their giddy participation, however, it’s not a trade-off they resent.

During the show, a box off to the left of the house gradually filled up with ac tors finished with their own pieces. The audience was happy, but that box full of actors was beside themselves. Screaming encouragement, draping themselves over the rail in exhaustion, kicking the backs of each others chairs – they looked like Aristotle’s “catharsis” in action.

Now, while it has them weakened from the experience, the theater should fight kicking and biting to keep these actors around. Anna Paquin, Billy Crudup, and Ben Shenkman do marvelously onstage, and that’s good to know – and good for the theater. But how do we keep Alan Tudyk, Adam Goldberg, and Justin Long from going West again?

The nicest thing about the “celebrity” 24-hour plays is the loose interpretation of the word. With plenty of wattage coming from headlining actors like Sam Rockwell and Christina Ricci, unfamiliar names were able to crop up both on and behind the scenes. Young director Louis Moreno, who was directing in bars before he got a post at INTAR a few days ago, steered Gaby Hoffman and Mr. Lillard around with ease. Andre Royo, who has been with the 24-hour plays since their inception, isn’t yet a household name, but should be.

With “After the Fall’s” anomie-inspiring airport set looming in the background, the show itself zoomed wildly between “so bad it’s good” moments to surprising moments of gentle writing. The audience, though, was forgiving, laughing in bizarre places. The opening number “Why Should I Vote?” was a spoken-word affirmation of the duties of citizenship. When a Heritage High School alumnus said his reason to vote was to fight gentrification, the landed gentry in the audience actually tittered nervously: Don’t we like gentrification?

After an evening of amusing moments (Aasif Mandvi rescuing Amanda Peet when she went helplessly dry brought down the house), David Lindsay-Abaire sucker-punched the crowd with his gross-out black-comedy “Baby Food.” With Rachel Dratch as an earnest mother, sneaking “spiritual” bits of placenta to prospective godparent Rosie Perez, the evening kicked up a notch into real, side-splitting humor.

Like the 24-hour plays themselves, there may be something a little sick about the concept – but at the very least, you know it’s nourishing.