In the spirit of independence, Longwood University’s theatre department allowed all the leeway to its students for it’s 11th annual ten-minute playwriting festival. The show, organized by the Creative Writing program, allows Longwood students an opportunity to direct, design and ultimately perform the selected plays.
This year, six plays, each executed in roughly 10 minutes or so were chosen and overall the production was great. Although the plays were not written by Longwood students this year, the selections couldn’t have been better, with a terrific balance of comedy, poignant messages and intensity.
Beginning with “Fargo 3D”, each play had minimal stage design, utilizing only a few props. To that effect, there was also minimal lighting and a balanced but not overbearing use of music. Instead, “Zero to Sixty” emphasized acting chops, bringing to life the scripts selected with personable characters and relatable scenes.
The aforementioned “Fargo 3D” was a terrific intro, a quality mix of political commentary (budget cuts) and painfully relatable mishaps regarding overpriced movie theatre food. Where “Zero to Sixty” excelled was giving the audience a lot in those 10 minutes to feel satisfied, essentially elongating scenes without over-saturating them.
The following act, “Cupid’s Beau”, was a revealing scene about infidelity in a marriage and the lengths partners are willing to go to find those things out. Haley Mizelle as Lacy in particular had a moving performance, first playing a sexual romantic interest only to find the humanity in “true love”.
The best act of the night followed in “Raghead”. The poignancy of the script, highlighting religious intolerance and racial discrimination against Muslims was powerful in every sense of the word. Helena Lasala’s character Sarah delivered a strong monologue, representing the sentiments many Muslim-Americans feel but may not always voice.
The funny thing is, Sarah wasn’t even actually Muslim, instead wearing a veil for a social experiment. Experiment she did, as her love interest Peter (played by Ryan Bultrowicz) seemed to be a terrific young man, but ultimately couldn’t get past his xenophobic fears and thus captured a parallel to current American issues.
The only serious grievance that could be made about “Zero to Sixty” was the resulting sequence of the plays. Following “Raghead”, two solid plays, “The Wedding Night Tweets” and “Superiority Complex” followed, but underwhelmed compared to the former; disappointing a tad in that sense.
However, what “The Wedding Night Tweets” lacked in poignancy, it more than made up for in pure comedy. A painfully funny take on modern day obsession with social media, hilarity ensued when Greg (played by Josh Fried) found out Maria (played by Kayla Arnold) live-tweeted his performance on wedding night.
The last act, “Santa Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, was a great ending, a light-hearted scene reminiscent of the movie “Step-Brothers”. All in all “Zero to Sixty” more than showcased a talented Longwood Theatre Department. In spite of the few blunders committed by some of the characters, each character on display was brought to life by a more than capable crop of actors and actresses.
