Playwrights Foundation's Flash Plays: NO RATING

An evening of 1-2 minute "plays," presented in clusters of nine or ten plays one after the other, each cluster featuring one rotating ensemble of actors and directed by a different director, leads this viewer to several conclusions:

1) Put enough playwrights in a room with enough word processors and you will find out about their lives, their concerns and their views about the world in which they live.

     1a) Judging from the topics of the plays selected, the authors are not worried as much about the outside world as they are about gentrification in the Mission, gender, sexual orientation and technology.

2) Directors matter.

3) Headlines be damned, our artists reflect what they see around them. They may worry every few weeks about another mass shooting, but they are concerned every day with economic survival and existential issues.

4) We love Flash Plays. There were several standouts, like Josh Senyak's "Cell Phones," Alison Luterman's "Brooklyn/Oakland," and Michael Sullivan's "The Rock."  But, to be honest, a hundred or so plays are impossible to digest. By intermission we were toast. Some day we would love to see a third as many three times longer.