During its brief time on campus this past week, the Festival of the Arts seemed to have more to offer than anyone had time to take in. Fortunately, for casual crowds and serial festival goers, were given the chance to see seven different plays performed each day in many different locations, including the Castle Commons, Rabb Steps and the Rose Art Museum.These plays are part of a nationwide project called "365 Plays, 365 Days," the brainchild of Suzan-Lori Parks, who decided to write a play each day for a year. Some are only a few sentences long, and others stretch on for pages. The Ensemble Theater took responsibility for week 24 of the project, whose plays included such eclectic characters as a talking dog, male stalkers, umbrellas and other random individual objects.

With so much freedom given to the director and actors, each production could have gone horribly wrong.

The movements of the actors had to be adaptable. Director Katie Nadworny '09 used clear logic in choosing the setting for each production. Her reasoning for choosing the Commons for most of the shows was simple: It was the most easily accessible rehearsal space for a cast of mostly sophomores.

During the performances in the Castle Commons, each play took place in a different part of the room. Requiring the audience to move around connected it with the actors. This was especially important since so many of the plays were about the human experience and the relationship between actors and audience.

The staging completely shifted, however, when the production moved to the Rose Art Museum The exhibits currently on display seemed well-adapted to the production, and the actors used a platform with a full flight of stairs for a ladder.

The audience members were asked to turn 180 degrees partway through the performance, and, on the other side of the room, a background of concentric circles of neon lights drew their eyes into the show.

One standout moment from the play was when Zohar Fuller '10, playing a dog, cried, "I am hunter, bow-wow." She gallivanted around the stage with two actresses behind her acting as the body of the dog, triumphant in its successful pursuit of an opossum.

The fourth day stood out for its creativity. All the actors performed random acts on the stage of the Castle commons and crossed them off of a list of 365 things to do. These included introducing themselves and kissing the hand of an audience member. After each one, Fuller, sighing, took a single step, and everyone applauded. The only constant was Fuller's step, followed by Laura Lorand's '09 waking from a dream in which she was an actress and heard applause, then drenching herself in blood from the overworked hands of the audience members.

This sort of avant-garde symbolism was typical of the play, which left audience members with a lot to think about. With no costumes to define their characters, actors defined their parts themselves. The simplicity of dress seemed to remind the audience that, within each of us, there is an actress longing for applause, a dog proud of exacting its power over smaller creatures and much more.