Play in a Day

The first annual Play in a Day event was organized by the Mermaid players and the Department of Theater and Dance. The event was formerly called 24 Hour Plays, but due to complications with naming rights, it was changed.

The occasion began with a writer’s meeting at eight o’clock on Friday, Jan. 29.

At the meeting, participants were given the theme for the plays. This year it was “a new world.” The writers were also given a prop, a line, and an action that had to be incorporated into the play. The prop was a metal bowl with a hole in the bottom, the line was “gee whiz that’s serious,” and the action was a tumble. According to Vice President of the Mermaid Players Sean Jones ’17,  19 plays were produced.

Jonathan Long ’19, co-writer of one of the plays performed, Toska, expressed his nerves in presenting the piece to his peers in the audience saying, “[The] most stressful part of the experience is knowing that you are going to put a play in front of an audience of your peers that was written in the same fashion as many of my papers, that is, the night before and on three cans of Red Bull.”

After the plays were written, the directors met at eight o’clock Saturday morning. 15 directors participated and approximately 25 actors were selected to perform.

Many actors expressed one of their primary concerns leading to the plays was their ability to memorize their lines in such a short period of time.

However, one first-year, Max Farley ’20, expressed the opposite sentiment saying, “I was really confident in the abilities of my fellow actors/actresses and myself to be performance ready in the few hours we had to rehearse.”

15 plays were performed at 8 p.m. that same night at the Cubiculo, a performance space located next to the Carlisle Theater.

The plays varied in content. Some focused on average daily lives and others involved the exploration of new lands. Some were just a brief interpretive dance. Some plays also incorporated the audience.

One play was an edited version of the transcript from the court case State of Georgia v. Denver Allen. Bianca LoGiurato ’17, who co-edited the transcript with her roommate, Keriann Pfleger ’17, said she “found the court transcript… somewhere on the internet, and then one of [her] favorite TV shows actually animated it.” Since then, LoGiurato thought the case would be funny to perform. She says, “The fact that it was a real court transcript blows my mind and definitely made it more comical. Truth is stranger than fiction.”

There were approximately 50 people in attendance for the performances, which lasted about two hours with a ten-minute intermission. Six tech members helped throughout the night to ensure that the plays ran smoothly.

Jones said, “It goes to show that people don’t have to spend days laboring on art; they can make it in less than 24 hours.”

Many of the participants expressed how proud they were of the event and felt it was a success.

Austin Fuller ’20 said, “It’s hard to believe we pulled everything we did in such a short amount of time, I’m so proud and happy to have worked with this group of people and I can’t wait to do it again next year.”