Beeeep! The bell rings at 7:05 am, signaling the start of first period. Most students are in their first-period classrooms, waiting for class to begin. Approximately fifty students are not. They are locked in a computer lab, given a slip of paper, and left alone. What is going on?

On Friday, March 3rd, the annual “Plays in a Day” event took place. Students who are a part of Ward Melville’s Cinnabar club were divided into seven groups with approximately six to eight people each. Each group was given a prompt about which to write a ten-minute-long play. Each group was also assigned a certain number of actors from the Ward Melville Player’s club. By 9th period, the play would be completely written and the actors would practice performing it.

Play performances took place at Ward Melville from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Students paid five dollars for admission. The money raised from the event will be donated to Equity Fights AIDS, a nonprofit organization that helps men, women, and children across the world.

“Plays in a Day” was a liberating experience for both the playwrights and actors. They were free to be as creative as they wished and had fun in the process.

For the actors, having such a short amount of time to rehearse for the performance made it important for them to be able to quickly understand and invest in the character they were assigned to portray. For the writers, creativity and cooperation were equally as necessary, as they, too, were not given much time.

Senior Kat Johnson is the co-president of Cinnabar and was a playwright for the event. “It’s an awesome event to participate in,” Kat remarked. “It’s always interesting to see where the prompts go, especially the more challenging ones. The writers always crack themselves up while writing the plays, which is always fun.” Participating in the event can also reveal students to new interests. “Sometimes writers will create more parts than they have actors, which forces a member of the group to act. That group member may find that they like acting and do something with it later,” Kat explained.

Kudos to our writers and actors for a day of creativity, laughter, and helping those in need!