Theatre culture is rich and lush with tradition. A ghost light is often left on all night in the middle of the stage to ward off unwanted spirits, an actor will opt to refer to Macbeth as “The Scottish play” out of fear that it is bad luck, likewise it is said to be bad luck to say “good luck” on opening night. SUNY Brockport’s theatre department has developed traditions of its own, including the biennial production Festival of Ten. This show comprises ten, ten-minute plays, often featuring new work. Ten-minute plays are submitted to Brockport from all around the country and through the play selection committee, the hundreds of submissions were whittled down to the ten plays performed in the festival.
Each production of Festival of Ten is unique as it always features different plays. This year it was particularly unique because it is usually performed on the main stage, a classic proscenium arch. This year it was performed in the blackbox theatre. Blackbox theatres are often used for experimental, immersive work and utilize more audience interaction. In that spirit, the audience was asked to fill out a survey picking the “best of the fest,” a lighthearted competition to gauge what plays the audience connected with the most.
The winner of this competition is playwright Rand Higbee for An Essential Play. An Essential Play is about an employee who works at a call center during the zombie apocalypse. She is then asked to continue doing her job while keeping the zombies at bay with no additional pay or support, sound familiar? This hilarious play poked fun at the absurdity of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Higbee was inspired to write this piece by his own life.
“I was an essential worker, and I really don’t think the public has really understood what these people did or appreciated what these people did…they put themselves in danger so you could buy your groceries”, said Higbee.
Higbee explored his passion for theatre in college when he pursued a theatre degree from South Dakota State University, and he became involved in every aspect. He worked as an actor, director and backstage crew member. Eventually, he figured he might as well write too. He then went on to earn a Masters of Fine Arts in playwriting from the University of Nevada.
Playwriting is in the air at SUNY Brockport, as new addition to the theatre department Samantha Merchant is a playwright herself. Merchant earned her undergraduate degree in creative writing here at SUNY Brockport, then earned a Master of Fine Arts in playwrighting at Spalding University. Merchant was inspired by one of her professors at Brockport when they read her work and said that they thought it should be a play.
Merchant’s work has been produced across the United States and Canada. Merchant details the way she approaches playwriting by referencing the article “Visit to a Small Planet” by Elinor Fuchs.
“Treat each play as if it’s its own foreign planet and you’re an alien visiting this planet. Whatever is on that (planet) within the play is that world (and) that is the only truth. It’s the only thing that can happen in this world,” said Merchant.
This philosophy forces a playwright to think deeply about fine details when developing their world. Theatre is a form of escapism and in order to leave our current planet we must create a new one entirely. Merchant prefers to write plays that are either hyper realistic or lean into absurdity, because sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Current Junior, Sonni Amoroso speaks to their experience as an actor in both Festival and full-length productions. During Festival Amoroso played “Zombie” in An Essential Play and “Jason” in Two Bean Burritos and an Awkward Silence. They are currently playing “Debb” in the musical Ordinary Days.
Amoroso found that while it was challenging to develop a fully formed character in only ten minutes it was helpful having never seen these characters portrayed previously. This way Amoroso got the opportunity to develop the entirety of the character themself without being influenced by other renditions. “Working on Festival of ten was a unique process…personally I was in two plays (and) as an actor you want to impact the audience, so a lot of the work was thinking about how I could make a mark in 20 minutes,” said Amoroso.
SUNY Brockport, through both academia and productions such as this, provides an outlet for these new planets to be produced and likewise explored by an audience. This coming semester a playwriting course will be offered and taught by a guest director from GEVA theatre.
