A Play a Day: '365 Days/365 Plays' Comes to Baltimore

Five years ago, Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play a day for a year.  The resulting play cycle is called 365 Days/365Plays - some plays are very short, less than a page. Others last forever.  Ms. Parks was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Topdog / Underdog.

The 365 International Festival invites any theater in the world to join a grassroots premiere of this play cycle. Over 700 theaters are producing the plays in all of the major U.S. cities, regions and universities, as well as all over the world. Produced by Bonnie Metzgar and Suzan-Lori Parks, the 365 Festival is being performed from November 13, 2006 through November 12, 2007.

According to the 365 website, "plays can be produced in traditional theater spaces or site-specific locations, opera halls or ice rinks. They can be staged readings or fully produced. Participating theaters will each present seven plays, representing one week of this play cycle, before then passing the cycle on to the next theater in a cultural relay race that celebrates the community of theater artists and audiences wherever they are found - online and around the world.  All performances are free to the public and all artists can participate. As we like to say at 365, there's pie for everyone. So whether you are an audience member or an artist, we invite you to join 365."

That festival is coming to the Baltimore area this week, with performances by a group of artists at Run of the Mill Theatre and Morgan State University in partnership with the University of California at Irvine.  Performances include a preview/open dress rehearsal at 8PM tomorrow, and performances August 30 ? September 1 at 8PM at the Turpin-Lamb Theater at The Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center on the campus of Morgan State University.  This event is free.

James Knipple, Founding Director of Run of the Mill Theater and Shirley Basfield Dunlap, coordinator of the MU Theatre Department are producing this entry in 365/365, and recently answered some questions for BroadwayWorld.com. 

James Howard (JH): Can you explain what Ms. Parks' 365 Plays/365 Days project is?

James Knipple (JK): The best way to explain the project is to point people to the website. http://www.365days365plays.com/about.php is Suzan-Lori's take on what the project is. For me, 365 Days/365 Plays is (or has become) the largest world premiere theater festival ever. Basically, there are several "hubs" (mostly geographic - cities like Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York...or states, such as Texas, but also there's a university hub that's comprised of colleges and universities around the country) and each hub has a host theater. Then 51 other companies in that hub are selected and weeks/scripts assigned, and these theaters have free reign to perform the plays as they choose. Now, there are over 700 companies involved, across the country and even around the world. It's about big theaters and small theaters working together to create something exciting. Some groups are doing something simple, like a staged reading of the plays. Or, for instance, my wife is an actress in Los Angeles, and she worked on a week's plays with a small theater there, and they did a short improv thing with the plays that lasted about 10 minutes. Other places, like Run of the Mill, are doing bigger productions. Some places are performing in theater spaces. Others are performing on street corners or in coffee shops. The possibilities are almost endless.

Shirley Basfield Dunlap (SBD): Suzan-Lori Parks has taken on a feat that very few playwrights can top.  Then to have theatres throughout the country to participate in a "corporate" theatre production, so to speak, contributes to the entire idea of what theatre is?for the people and for the sake of doing art.  Each piece, whether several pages or a paragraph, have so much to give to the dynamics of American thought. 

JH: How did you get involved?

JK: I started Run of the Mill here in Baltimore. Last year I found out that I was accepted into graduate school at UC Irvine, so Run of the Mill was transitioning into new leadership. I had read about 365 in American Theatre magazine (back when only 6 theaters were part of the project). I thought that being a part of something like that was right up Run of the Mill's alley, and there were no Baltimore theaters on the list, so I helped to track down Suzan-Lori's agent to find out if we could join the project. Jenny Tibbels (who took over for me) did the leg work, and Run of the Mill became part of the project. I personally got involved because I was interested in working on the project, and I was interested in bringing some of my new friends from UC Irvine to Baltimore to do a show, and 365 seemed to be the right project for it. So we got some grants and 11 of us flew from Orange County to Baltimore. We'll be here for a total of 2 weeks, staying downtown, training during the day and rehearsing at night.

SBD: My involvement in this project is based on asking Run of the Mill Artistic Director if I could be considered for one of the director's positions and also offering to bring the Theatre program at Morgan State University in to be the venue for the performances.  Theatre Morgan has produced in the past two of Ms. Parks' scripts, in the blood and Topdog/Underdog and wanted to very much be a member of the National Festival. 

JH: How did a partnership come about between Morgan and UC?

JK: Run of the Mill's newest artistic director, David Mitchell, is a faculty member at the theater department at Morgan. He was able to coordinate with them for RotM to use one of their theaters, and Shirley expressed interest in being a part of the project, so there we go. And UC Irvine is really fantastic about supporting their students. When they found out about the project, they wanted to support it. Four of us received Medici grants (handed out by the UCI School of the Arts Dean's office to support art student's summer projects), and Bill Rauch (former UCI faculty member and new artistic director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival) managed to find us a grant to cover most of the airfare for the project. In fact, they supported us so much that the only costs that any of the UCI people have to cover are food and entertainment. 

JH: What, ultimately, is your goal?

SBD: The goal, for me, is to direct new works with new people in a developmental workshop atmosphere that gets to be about the work and not about the ticket sales.  Another goal I am interested in is the fact that there is recognition of our university and its department, Theatre Morgan.

JK: I think that Run of the Mill has two separate sets of goals for the project. One is to foster collaboration and create community between two different groups of diverse artists (from Baltimore and from UCI). And so far, that has been extremely successful. And beyond that, friendships are being forged. In fact, some members of the Baltimore cast happen to be coming to LA the week after the project, and several of us have offered them places to stay! And the second goal is to create a unique theatrical experience for Baltimore audiences. And that's exactly what's going to be delivered. The scripts are not your normal sort of plays (on purpose - that's a part of Suzan-Lori's aesthetic), and we're approaching them in a very physical way. It's going to be pretty cool. 

JH: Explain the "workshop to stage" process.

SBD: The participants are in day long workshops learning and crafting techniques brought to them by some very fine instructors.  They use the skills to develop a script in one week of rehearsal.

JK: Well, when we realized that it was possible to bring students from California to Baltimore to do a play, we started to brainstorm about how we might best use our time and talents. So we decided to host an intensive acting "workshop" where acting students from both coasts would join with teachers from RotM and UCI to train in physically-based approaches to theater creation. David is teaching Sensory Work, I'm teaching contact improv, and Janel Miley (a RotM artistic associate) and Nylda Mark and Benny Wills (both graduate students at UCI) are teaching Viewpoints. Both Viewpoints and Contact Improv actually derived from dance, with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company translating it to the stage. Annie Loui, a professor at UCI, pioneered contact improv for theater. So I cast four undergraduate actors from UCI to be students in the workshop (I had over 40 undergrads audition for the project!), and David and Shirley had auditions and cast actors from the Baltimore area. So the cast has been training for 6 1/2 hours a day this week, Mon-Fri, and then rehearsing for another 3 hours on top of that! And it's been successful in that we've begun to create a physical vocabulary with each other that will translate directly to the work on stage. 

JH: Why should audiences come see this new production? 

SBD: Just virtue of the fact of being a viewer of a National, now International Theatre Festival should be more than exciting for the audience members.  Seeing new works is what the art of theatre is all about.

JK: 365 is a once in a lifetime sort of project. The show is going to be visually amazing. We have two graduate designers from UCI working on the show (including the first ever student accepted into the new sound design program at UCI), and they've joined with a designer here in Baltimore for a really unique collaboration. And the actors are really amazing. They're talented and really give 110% in everything that they do. And Morgan State has a beautiful theater that we're in. That really helps a lot with the sort of tack that we've taken with this project. And there are very few area theaters that are part of the project. Towson University had a week of plays, and Rep Stage had a week, but Run of the Mill is the only Baltimore city theater company to be a part of the project. The show is short, clocking in around an hour, and it's totally free to come watch the show.  

PHOTOS of the Company courtesy of James Knipple.

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