365 Days/365 Plays, Lisa Manzi, Taylor Mali, Tom Miller Jurvik, and Heather Soucy.

Chester College of New England Stages 365 Days/365 Plays

By Kristen Koczarski

CHESTER, NH…Chester College of New England’s production of 365 Days/ 365 Plays is a collaborative, fluid theatre experience that seems to walk an intriguing line between performance art and improv. Eleven short plays will be performed at the college’s Wadleigh Library March 30 and 31 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the world premier of this new play series by Pulitizer Prize winning playwright Susan-Lori Parks. The performances are free and open to the public.
For 365 Days/ 365 Plays Parks wrote a play a day for a year. These plays have been divided up among theatre groups across the country and will be performed a week at a time for an entire year. Each play is only a few minutes long and the content is equivocal enough to allow for multiple interpretations. The production process has been extraordinarily unconventional and director Peter Civetta said that he has tried to do as “little directing as possible.” Instead, the creative process has been distributed equally and has continued through the first several months of the semester-long class.

Students were asked to prepare many different readings of the plays for class where they rehearsed many different versions of each play. The casting, itself, was not done until only a month before opening. In this fashion, they were able to try out countless interpretations of scene and character. When asked about the creative process one student, junior Charles Boucher, said, “Honestly, it’s been throwing a lot of [expletive] at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

For more information, visit the Chester College of New England website at www.chestercollege.edu.

Kristen Koczarski is a junior creative writing major at Chester College of New England and a member of the Compass Rose staff.




Hardwood - Lisa Manzi

Your seeds were planted
In me ages ago somehow.

I thought I had scraped
Them out as easily as we scooped

Black spawn from papaya
Now no matter how I dig,

Or where- they remain.
I rip thready roots

Bring them no water,
Smother under gray mesh.

I no longer even nourish
Them with my thought

Yet they thrive. On night
I found they’d grown

Into a tree in my basement.
Rooted in soul that is not there

Under some slant of radiance
Whose source I cant track or block

This will not be moved
Yet belongs to the sun.





COMPASS ROSE interviews Taylor Mali:
Compass Rose: What goal do you have when performing slam?
Taylor Mali: "Performing slam" is a problematic term because there is spoken poetry and there are slam performances.




Watching Grant, by Tom Miller Jurvik.
"From the moment that the Baumgartners moved to the cul-de-sac at the end of Conifer Park Drive, watching Grant proved to be a necessity." (more)





By Heather Soucy.