I love having the inside word on creative goings on in DC.  If I didn’t personally know a playwright (a real live playwright), I might have missed Rorschach Theater’s Klecksography on Sunday afternoon.

A kleck is German for what you and I would call an inkblot.  A Klecksography is six mini-plays, all written and workshopped within one week.

Each of the six plays were inspired by real holiday stories posted on the theater’s Facebook page.  Six playwrights adapted them.  And on Sunday, I was one of four audiences to enjoy them.

The plays ranged from happy and bittersweet to agonizingly melancholy.  Favorite scenarios involve an anti-Semitic Santa, a gender-changing Julian Assange, and a dirty talking plumber who is rightly afraid of werewolves.

The event took place at the Mead Theater Lab inside the Flashpoint Gallery in Chinatown.  A black box theater, it can be moved around to accomadate five set pieces, with audience members seated in between.  We were assured that, even though the action would happen very close to us, we would not be pulled into it.  You didn’t come to rehearsal, so you can’t be in the play.

Each ten minute play was a nugget of thought, each one unique, touching a different idea about what the holiday season really means/is/should be.  Keep an eye on Rorschach.  I’m still kicking myself that I missed last summer’s zombie play.