I had a blast writing for the 2019 Boston One-Minute Play Festival, and just as much fun watching it. To see sixty plays performed in sixty minutes is both inspiring and profoundly disorienting.
The One Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) is a national organization that produces many festivals around the country each year. At each, they work with local writers, which allows them to bill the annual festival as a social barometer, something that takes the pulse of the communities and, overall, of the nation. I think it’s a really cool concept.
The prompt was simple: write one original, sixty second play that is a response to the world as you see it in this moment. There was one notable limitation: No Trump references, impersonations, allusions. My play, Walled, walked up to that line, but I don’t think it crossed it. Obviously, it was inspired by the various reactions to Trump’s border-wall proposal and the general attitudes and policies about immigration that are behind it. However, I don’t see it as a play about Trump, or even a play about immigration. Walled is a play about fear and the things that happen when fear rules us.
David Marino directed Walled. The actors were Catherine Lee Christie, Scott Colford, Pete Desiderio, and Ethan Selby.
You can read, recommend and request rights to produce Walled and my other plays at New Play Exchange.