On Saturday, April 26, Staff Writers Manaia Taula-Lieras and Shyla Upadhyay attended 365 Days / 365 Plays performed at Barnard College’s Theatre Senior Thesis Festival.

Excited chatter filled the walls of the Minor Latham Playhouse in Milbank Hall as the audience poured in with neon green wristbands and colorful bouquets for performers. As soon as everyone settled in, the lights turned off and everything went dark. A small white light shone down on two characters. “Who are you?” one of them asked. Faint yet eerie whooshing sounds played in the background as the other one responded: “I am that, you are that, and that’s… all there is.”

365 Days / 365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks was one of the three performances for directing theses in the Barnard Theatre Department this year. As the title suggests, Parks originally wrote a play every day for a year. This project began on November 13 2002, which was also the day director Sahmaya Busby (CC ’25, and Bwog’s ex-editor-in-chief!) was born. Busby wrote in her director’s note that  “together, this play and I entered and remain in a world of political and social instability, and two shaken societies plagued by wars and injustices fought at home and abroad.” Through this play, we were forced to question things we usually take for granted. Does choice really exist? As the characters put it, “This is a free country… or is it?”

The actors utilized all areas of the theatre, moving on the floor and through the aisles, fully immersing the audience in the performance. When on stage, the scene was mostly set in the home of an American family; a large American flag seen through a window in the center seemed an expression of their pride.  The set design by Abigail Fixel (BC ’26) brought together both typical household items and the themes of violence that are felt throughout the play. On the left wall there were a range of knives—belonging to the father, who is also a general and butcher—alongside various kitchen utensils like pots, pans and spatulas. On the right side, there was an aesthetic combination of scenic paintings and portraits, including one of the family itself.

The play followed this seemingly cookie-cutter but dysfunctional family through an undefined amount of time. In the opening scene, Junior and his sister, played by Amelia Alton (BC ‘28) and Gabriella Kinzett (CC ‘26) respectively, comforted one another in light of the haunting sounds around them and frightening reality of the war in which they lived. However, this warm tone would not last, as it was immediately juxtaposed by the following scene of a general—who we later learn is the siblings’ father played by Julian Rodriguez (CC ’28)—scolding one of his wounded soldiers, played by Elsa Rose McIntyre Córdoba (BC ‘28), as they struggled to pull him in a shopping cart. While the family tried and failed to create distance from what was occurring outside the home, another character took a more involved approach. A protester in red clothing, played by Bess Blackburn (BC ‘26), moved through the audience while chanting, “No war, more peace!” The family, still on stage and looking down at her, watched as though they were separated from her actions. The children stood with confused yet curious expressions while the mother presented the protester as “history.”

The mother, played by Kennedy Thomposon (BC ‘27), seemed to portray all calls to action against the war as lost practices, but this was not the case. The same protester took to the stage again after being dug up from the ground by the wounded soldier. Despite previously being buried, she stood without an ounce of dirt on her. When the soldier asked, “Are you dead?” she replied with a solemn “No.” This suggested that the anti-war movement resisted death, literally and figuratively.

As the show continued, the general eventually came home to his family in an unpleasant reunion with his wife. Although he was better received by his children, he could not comfortably adjust to his life at home after serving in the war. The home was no true escape from what he had experienced, but showed traces of it everywhere. The children played the card game “War” on the dining table, and only war films were being shown on television. The lack of choice the characters had in terms of entertainment or escape from war only added to their normalized outlook on violence.

At one point the mother poured a heap of sugar onto the general’s plate, in an attempt to sweeten what she called his “taste for killing.” She is under the impression that this is possible without acknowledging how the violence her husband was complicit in has carried into the home. This was reflected in the production’s design: the general, as a soldier and a butcher, always had literal blood on his hands. One child looked at him in awe; “I want to be a soldier… just like you, Pa.” The other daughter excitedly picked up a knife from the family’s collection while glorifying the life of a butcher. The general was left horrified by their dreams. 

The play seemed somewhat nostalgic and at the same time futuristic. It made us realize that we too are caught up in the cycle of war. The stage didn’t boast fancy set designs—it was simple and drew the audience into the seemingly normal life of a family. It represented every ordinary family, forcing us to question whether this desensitized way of life should be ordinary at all. The minimalist set design allowed for the stories of each individual character to shine. The audience was compelled to watch closely, because the facial expressions of all the actors were important to understand the depth of this play. 

“Does your war fall short, somehow, and leave you wanting more?” one actor noted. Maybe we took the word “war” too literally. War represents violence, trauma and the hopeless sociopolitical state of the world. But the war that’s constantly inside us is also breaking us. In all those moments when we don’t feel enough—when we keep fighting for “more”—we just need to sit back for a minute. Pause. Think. Breathe. 

At the end of the play, the stage went dark, and the two characters from the first scene emerged in the white light again. “Who are you?” one of them asked again. Faint yet eerie whooshing sounds played in the background. But this time, they didn’t feel random—they sounded like bombs falling somewhere far into the distance. “I am that, you are that, and that’s… all there is.”

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