The Play’s the Thing at Play in a Day

Friday night at 8 p.m., playwrights and directors from six local and regional theaters gathered with members of the Bethesda Urban Partnership staff to be served not only good bites but, they hoped, good assignments: the prop, line and theme they will have from which to produce a play that was to be performed just 24 hours later.  After the playwrights worked their creative magic, at 8 a.m. Saturday morning, the directors took over with their actors rehearsing their ten-minute masterpieces. At 6 p.m. they all met for quick run-throughs and tech rehearsals.

Then the curtain went up on the seventh annual Play in a Day, presented by Bethesda Urban Partnership and the Bethesda Arts and Entertainment District, at Lerner Theater. 

Play in a Day was created in 2004 by Bethesda residents Kristin Stone Palmer and Robin Mansfield and originally was presented as part of the Bethesda Urban Partnership’s annual Literary Festival.

Participating theaters this year were Bethesda’s Adventure Theatre (Glen Echo) and Imagination Stage, as well as Woolly Mammoth PlayGround Playwrights (Arlington, Va.), Ganymede Arts (D.C.) and Olney Theatre Center (Olney).   Michael J. Bobbitt, Producing Artistic Director of Adventure Theatre, has been Artistic Director of Play in a Day for the past three years.  For him and his colleagues, “It’s kind of a relief, to think about something besides long-term kids’ productions. This takes away everything, you have no idea what’s going to happen—that’s what so fun—it’s visceral.” 

One year the prop was red cooking tongs, and a theater turned that into a play about three lobsters in a lobster tank, where the two male lobsters tried to convince the female lobster they were in a beauty contest, so she’d try and get picked as the ‘winner’ and be plucked for dinner instead of them. Last year when the prop was a snow sled, one playwright spun that into a story about a family of sign twirlers.

This year half of the theaters got "jealousy" as a theme, a pink pillow as a prop and the Monty Python line, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”  The other half got the theme "mistaken identity," the prop gold cellophane wrap and the Dr. Seuss line, “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am.”

And then the fun began.

After the performances, while the judges deliberate, the directors, playwrights and actors engage in a “talk back” with the audience about their process.  Play in a Day confers awards for Best Writing, Best Direction, Best Acting Ensemble and Best Overall Play.  This year’s judges are Deborah Preston (Dean of Arts at Montgomery College),  Carol Trawick (President of the Jim & Carol Trawick Foundation) and Jessica Burgess (Artistic Associate at Round House Theatre and founding director of The Inkwell, a resource for new play development).

“One thing about writing a play in 24 hours, you just have to write it; there’s not a lot of room for editing,” said Round House Theatre’s Jackie Lawton, who was a playwright for the event last year. After getting her assignment of a red plastic snow sled as the prop, the theme “unrequited love” and the line “Off with his head,” “I had to get up to teach the next morning, so I had only about a four-hour window to write.  You just go with the spirit of the event, which is fun and zany!”

This year’s winners:

Best Direction--Woolly Mammoth PlayGround Playwrights

Best Acting Ensemble--Adventure Theatre

Best Use of Prop – Imagination Stage

Best Writing – Ben Kingsland, Olney Theatre Center