It’s been a wild ride for the #1MPF this year. With theater shortages and the onslaught of Hurricane Harvey, there have been challenges of space, rehearsal availability and audience outreach.
Because we’re in a smaller theater this year, we followed a model that was done in New York where there are two bills of plays over four nights. I saw the first bill on Sunday, and tonight opens bill #2 (or Bill B).
I haven’t had a chance to see as many rehearsals as usual (the photo is from an early one I attended), but it’s still been a hoot. My plays this year are called Twitter and Income Inequality. They’re both about the connectedness and disconnectedness of human relations and interactions, themes I like to return to.
A few years ago I wrote a play called OMG which started with two men conversing playfully via texts but ended on a very dark note where one man stripped and basically exposed himself to the other in a super creepy way. I still occasionally get strange looks from people who saw it. Why? They want to know.
Because the world is both playful and dark, sometimes turning on a dime. That’s why.
This year’s plays are about the deceptively intimate smoke screen of social media, and the significant differences between rich and poor, and also about what connects us as human beings.
A bit pretentious for one-minute plays? Totally. And that’s why they’re so fun to do. It’s all over like THAT.
See you tonight.
