The 15th annual Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival will take place this week. Named after a former Mask and Bauble artistic advisor, the festival is a chance for student playwrights to have their work performed. Many works are submitted, but only the two best are chosen and awarded a cash prize and a Mask and Bauble performance.
The first of this year’s two plays is Diamonds Are a Boy’s Best Friend by Mary Nagle (CAS ‘05). It centers on a typical American family, one that faces typical domestic issues, except that in this play, the wife always wears the pants.
“It’s a world like ours, but with the gender roles reversed,” director Amy Royce (CAS ‘07) said. “The wife is the primary breadwinner; girls ask boys to prom.”
In this world Erin, a working mother, played by Jessie Schacter (CAS ‘08), struggles to stay connected to her family.
The second play, Triptych, written by Dana Petrillo (CAS ‘04) and directed by Erin McCarthy (SFS ‘07), is more abstract. The play tells the story of an ordinary woman named Nikita, played by Cat Graves (CAS ‘08), by weaving together three separate moments in her life. Little pieces of each scene join together to form something more significant.
“The message is ‘life is cyclical,’” says Petrillo. “We are products of our histories.”
More of a focus was placed this year on the playwrights, with each of the main scripts going through multiple drafts before reaching a final product. In addition to the two main plays there are three staged readings of original student work, including a satire of Shakespeare by Kerry Gibbons (CAS ‘05).
Perhaps the most exciting event will be the Play-In-A-Day contest, in which teams of students have fewer than 24 hours to write and stage a short play. The finished products will be performed Saturday evening as the Festival’s final event. Also included in this year’s festival are an 8 1/2” by 11” play contest and the Techie Olympics, competitions open to all who like to dabble in stage lighting and buzz sawing.
The One Act Festival offers a broad sampling of the student creativity at Georgetown; in the two or three events that take place each night, there should be something for everyone.
-David Parkinson
