BY JON PETERS

In print | Published October 30, 2008

Although not as well-known as the McCabe Mile, Dash for Cash, or the Screw Your Roommate Dance, Drama Board’s “Play in a Day” festival is a gem of a semester-ly tradition, one that is quite fun and involves no nudity (these past years, at least). Over the course of an evening and a day, Swarthmore playwrights, directors, and actors get together to plan out a show, usually a collection of short plays, to be performed at the end of the 24 hours. Sound dizzying yet? While the festival was originally attempted this semester in September, the play was aborted due to a lack of actors—which led us to last Friday and Saturday’s Play in a Day.

Dustin Trabert ’10 could be considered the mastermind of the festival. At 10 on Friday night he had assembled a good selection of fine food, including rice crackers, cider and brie in Parrish Parlors; as he said, “You have thirty dollars, might as well spend it.” Surprisingly, the food failed to attract many writers, and so our numbers were thin—budding playwright Susanna Pretzer ’12 and I. I called my friend Hunter Bayliss ’12, whom I have observed from time to time on my hall, writing feverishly or playing the electric organ. Fortunately for us, Hunter itched to do the former that night, so he joined our ranks.

Over the next few hours we laughed, we talked, we tried the cheese, and then we settled in to try writing a play together. We discussed a drunken Orson Welles, Monty Python, and Beckett, finally deciding it was best for us to part ways and write individually. However, we still held onto our common inspiration: Hunter’s declaration that all good plays are about the search for cheesecake.

Over the next hour and a half, the writers continued to write, I chose to sleep, and the work eventually wrapped up for the evening. The next afternoon, I caught up with Dustin studying the cheesecake scripts in McCabe, and the production process resumed. As the day wore on, scripts were refined and edited, while I consulted both with Hunter about the next step, and with Dustin about the location of Hunter, neither of which was certain. Finally, at five, Hunter, Dustin, and Nemo Swift ’11, a thespian of wide renown, met at Science Center 101 to begin rehearsal.

Hunter’s play involved many declarations of “I want some cheesecake,” “No, I want some cheesecake,” which echoed through the hall throughout the evening. In my play, Nemo made a good showing as a forty-year-old woman betrayed by her cheesecake-loving husband. Susanna’s play involved a very creepy old man (Nemo again) who beckoned a weary traveler (Dustin) into the halls of death. Rehearsals continued unabated for the next few hours, Dustin helped distribute signs across campus later, not deterred by the rainstorm, and I returned to Science Center 101 at 9 p.m. to be met by some theater stalwarts in the audience readily awaiting the play.

The plays were excellent, considering the short amount of time it took to create them—as Dustin wrote in the Facebook invitation, “When It Only Takes a Day, You Can’t Say Its Overcooked!” Nemo played Susanna’s grim old man with panache and humor, and when Dustin finally entered his castle, and possibly death, the audience couldn’t help but feel chills. Hunter’s work reminded me of Terry Gilliams’ Brazil mixed with Silver and Cohn’s “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” A man at the Cheesecake Factory, played by Hunter, tries to order a cheesecake and instead is denied by each level of restaurant bureaucracy until he finally commits suicide.

Some plays like “The Seagull” and “Hamlet” last forever, which is laudable. Others are made for the moment in which they are created, an impromptu event celebrating the spontaneity of life itself, and these are something to be celebrated as well. As Dustin said during last Saturday’s rehearsal, “We take people out of their daily lives and say—‘hey, wanna put on a show?’ And it’s usually funny.”

Life can be enjoyed simply through its randomness, like cheesecake and mixed-up French waiters and creepy old men; as Shakespeare said, the play is the thing.

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