365

365 Days/ 365 Plays. Suzan-Lori Parks. Circle X Theatre Company. 3/24/07.

I'm impressed. It's unfortunate that it took until Week 19 to get me to see any of Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 Plays. It's an amazing undertaking and an impressive amount of collaboration and participation across the country.

The set of plays presented by Circle X Theatre Company was a powerful suite of reflections on the war in Iraq and the resultant mindless patriotism, pagentry, and protest. They formed a lovely grouping of ideas and cultural criticism.

Running a bit under half an hour, Circle X performed the plays outside the entrance to the Ford Amphitheater, staging them as a walking tour/environmental piece that made excellent use of a beautiful space. While the earlier pieces were wonderfully self-explanatory but not simple in their responses to the war, posing questions about what it means to be a participant or a protester or even an audience member or television viewer in a time of war, the pieces toward the end of the evening were more obscure in their meaning but thought-provoking nonetheless. All in all it was an excellent, refreshing short piece of theater that demonstrates exactly how much the theater can say about our lives and times in a few simple words and ideas. I was very impressed by both Parks' work and Circle X's production.