On November 13, 2006, the largest shared world premiere in the history of the American Theatre—maybe in the universe, so far—opened across the United States, as Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays took the stage. It was exactly four years since Ms. Parks began writing a play a day on November 13, 2002, and just a few months after she’d won the Pulitzer Prize for Topdog/Underdog.
There was considerable buzz at the time, with theatres from Seattle to San Antonio, and all areas between and beyond, stepping forward to produce the works. But now that the initial hum has faded a bit, how are things going with this unprecedented project, just a little over two months in?
Writing a play every day for a whole year—as Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks did in 2004—is an amazing feat, but, like running a marathon (the author even likens herself to athlete Lance Armstrong) it’s mainly about getting to the finish line, not running an interesting or meaningful route. Upon reaching that finish line, Parks felt the expected sense of accomplishment, and seemed ready to move on to her next venture—until, that is, her friend, theatre producer Bonnie Metzgar, reminded her that plays are meant to seen and not merely read.
That fateful reminder occurred in the summer of 2005, when Parks visited Metzgar in Denver, where Metzgar is the associate artistic director of Curious Theatre Company. “We were driving around in my jeep,” Metzgar has recounted so often that the story is now referred to as a “creation myth.” “I asked her what was going on with the 365 plays she’d decided to write.” Parks says, “I was like, ‘Well, I did ’em.’ And then Bonnie was like, ‘But now we have to do ’em.'”
And just like that, a revolutionary producing model was born.
The original plan was to get 365 theatres involved, which, Metzgar told Kathryn Walat in an article appearing in American Theatre, “initially felt like saying ‘let’s paint ourselves purple and fly to the moon.'” These 365 theatres would then be organized into seven regional hubs—in places like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Each hub would subsequently enlist and assist 52 satellite theatres in their region that in turn would perform one week’s worth of plays each. In addition, there appeared a network of university theatre groups, the hub for which is centered at the Yale School of Drama.
Thus, with Metzgar and Parks metaphorically painted purple and en route to the moon, theatre groups across the country began simultaneously performing each week’s plays on November 13, 2006—and they will continue doing so every day for an entire year.
Most of the plays are short, as might be expected, given the process of their writing, which often involved Parks sitting down at her desk, raising her arms and wiggling her fingers, then saying, “OK, God, what’s the play today?” Some plays have no dialogue, only stage directions, as with Lickety-Split, which Parks described in a recent radio interview as “the man stands on stage, a woman runs onstage, she licks him all over his body, and then she runs away.” There are also “play-chains” such as the 11-part series Father Comes Home from the Wars, and recurring characters like Abraham Lincoln, who bobs up regularly in the author’s work. (You can read the “Play of the Day” at the TCG website.)
By the end of its run, over 700 performing groups will have mounted productions of some or all of the plays in the 365 cycle, mostly in the US, but also in Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and China—at last count—and applications to produce continue to pour in from all over.
Such an unprecedented expression of passion might lead more than one theatre denizen to wonder whether all this might fizzle out after a few months, a feeling Parks herself admits to feeling at various points in her writing adventure. But early word from the frontline seems to indicate that the project is working.
The Atlanta Hub reportd that several enclaves of the Atlanta theatre scene are coming together in the true spirit of 365 Plays/365 Days. The Atlanta Hub’s website says that on Monday, February 5, 2007, “a group of energetic artists newly graduated from Spelman and Morehouse Colleges,” took to the “stage” in the bustling Jazzman’s Cafe on the Morehouse campus. “Strong images from the plays include a small young woman holding a full grown man on her back in ‘Horse & Rider,’ [camouflage]-clad dancers slithering through the audience and onto the stage in ‘Turtle Soup,’ the hilarious conjuring of an elevator through Jaspect’s muzak rendition of ‘Girl from Ipanema,’ and a well crafted mirroring dance in ‘Groundhog Day.'”
And all over the country, troupes have been organized solely for the event, performing in locations ranging from street corners, parking lots, bars, and night clubs, to bathrooms, swimming pools, and—oh yeah, stages.
In unprecedented fashion, established theatres across the country are suddenly opening their doors to unconventional audiences and actors alike—a result, no doubt, of the core ethic employed for both the writing and producing of the plays, which is, to use the author’s phrase, “radical inclusion.” Just as she had to “welcome and entertain all my far-out ideas,” as part of her writing process, so all ideas for staging the plays are welcome to the table in this “open source” model of multi-production.
Undoubtedly, the low royalty rate of $1/day to perform the plays is contributing to the project’s success. But many also believe it is the sense of community created by this “radical inclusion” model that has spawned such continued enthusiasm.
One thing we is certain: everyone is watching to see how this experiment will unfold.
