One Day Play Review

            From 7:30 PM September 6^th to 8:00 PM September 7^th, six plays were conceived, cast, directed, rehearsed, and performed.  This was part of Elon’s One Day Play Festival, sponsored by Alpha Psi Omega (the theater honor society).  Writers were given the task of incorporating the line “I can’t do anything with this duck in the room!” into an original ten-minute play.  To make things more difficult ach writer was given a different genre and two random photographs to shape the play.  In a way, the writing process of these plays reminded me of the research I am currently doing to find my Fellows project.

            As expected, the plays were extremely different even though they all shared a common line of dialogue.  One play was a fantasy about a gender role-reversed land where girls read comic books and saved princes in castles.  The next one was about a recently diseased man who gets one more night on Earth to lose his virginity.  Another play told the story of a man who wants revenge on the man who killed his one true love.  Some plays relied on the plot while others relied more on pop culture gags and sexual humor; both were generally well received by the audience.  It was intriguing to see the different results stemming from a common element.  Whether the line was said completely out of context or at the height of a climax, the audiences' reactions deemed it a success.

            While I enjoyed myself at the event, I wonder how people outside of the Department of Performing Arts would have liked it; Yeager’s seats were primarily filled with students in the department.  This could be because they wanted to support their friends’ work.  I, however, would attribute it to its advertising strategies.  Last year, I only found out about the event because my roommate’s sophomore friend forwarded her a departmental email about it.   This alienates members of the Elon community who enjoy theater but are not members of the Department of Performing Arts. 

Ultimately, I would love to expand the One Day Plays into a bigger event for the Department.  Its success has been shown with a packed house and rousing applause; with more advertising, there could be an even bigger audience.  Maybe Alpha Psi Omega could charge $3 a ticket and donate the proceeds to after-school arts programs.  There is a lot of potential for this event and I think this would benefit the community, the performers (because bigger audiences are more fun than smaller ones), and the department.