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.

J.D. Scrimgeour reading and interview, Donna L. Emerson, Louie Cronin, and W.T. Abernathy.

Thursday, March 22, 2007
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Featured Writer: J.D. Scrimgeour
Student Writers: Jessica Marshall and Jeff Metcho

J.D. Scrimgeour is a professor of English and director of creative writing at Salem State College. His most recent collection of poetry, The Last Miles, was published in 2005. Scrimgeour lives in Salem, MA with his wife, fiction writer, Eileen FitzGerald, and their two sons.

CLICK HERE to read an interview with J.D. Scrimgeour.



A House He Can See Out Of - Donna L. Emerson

He collects windows.
Finds doors, white.
Buys two-by-four studs,
two-by-twelve kiln-dried pine.

For five years he pieces them together,
a glass house he can look out of.
He sleeps in a tent on his land,
his grandfather’s land, his mother’s land.

His hand points to where the old logs rot:
“That’s the most fertile soil.
Isn’t it pleasant to look out on?”
By his mother’s grave, his father’s headstone.

A chickadee builds a late mossy nest
when he is not looking, in the corner
where his top beams meet.
She flies off whenever he comes near.

He doesn’t know why she sits
on her nest so long.
She waits on surrounding branches
for him to leave.

He climbs a ladder, sees three fuzzy
balls breathing in and out,
all hearts and feathers.
The nest floor pulsates.

He moves his camp,
half an acre away to give her
night privacy.

She waits on the locust tree by day
for him to finish the big window.



The Problem With Dead People, by Louie Cronin.
"Barbara knew better than to call. She knew that if she dialed any of her friends first, she’d be talked out of it." (more)




Giardini Naxos, by W.T. Abernathy.

Joanne Lowery, Arnie Kantrowitz, Daniel John, Matthew Masloski.

Muse Weeping - Joanne Lowery

What she provokes could flood Babylon
or rot the foundations of Alexandria.
Here in America, suburbs stay high and dry.
Our poets walk city streets inspired
by soot and taxi horns, the staccato
of fast walkers passing them by.
Anyone waiting at a crosswalk
needs a handkerchief for staunching.
She looks up, remembers the 41st floor
where she pushed a lover out the window.
For the seconds it took him to land
she felt his fear and weightlessness.
Her tears lubricate the description
of that head-over-heels plunge.
On the sidewalk is a puddle of her undoing.



COMPASS ROSE interviews Arnie Kantrowitz:
Compass Rose: As you were developing as a writer, were there any artists you tried to emulate? How did that affect your work?
Arnie Kantrowitz: In my late teens and early twenties, I wrote poetry exclusively. (more)



Shopping for a Penis, by Daniel John.
“When we were in the store, how come God didn’t give me a penis?” (more)




The Collector, by Matthew T. Masloski.