What do parallel universes, a cancer diagnosis and husband hunters have in common? They’re the subjects of ten-minute plays written by playwrights who rode the #13 Maryland Transit Administration bus on North Avenue Thursday evening and then penned plays that were performed on Friday, at the Load of Fun Theater.

Many of the playwrights had never ridden such a bus in Baltimore – or anywhere – before, so the exercise gave them insights not only into The Human Condition and the pros-and-cons of 24-hour theater, but the transit experience familiar to many of their fellow citizens who are regular MTA customers.

Lost in thought as they awaited the bus near Johns Hopkins Hospital at about 6:30p.m., all six playwrights boarded and began furiously scribbling, or in the case of Rebecca Wyrick and Ira Gamerman, typing.

“It’s bumpy, I didn’t think it would be!” Rosemary Frisino Toohey exclaimed.

Like life, Rosemary, like life!

David D. Mitchell, who heads Run of the Mill Theater Company, came up with the idea of doing a 24-hour theater festival, in which plays are written, rehearsed and then performed in exactly one day. He was involved in a similar project based around New York’s famed “A-Train.”

The way it worked in Baltimore, playwrights Wyrick, Gamerman, Frisino Toohey, Max Garner, Rich Espy and Sharon Goldner rode the bus back-and-forth, two-and-a-half times, penning their plays while bouncing along in the bus.

This first-ever 24-hour North Avenue Play Festival was hosted by Run of the Mill, an independent theatre company housed in Load of Fun, which is in the heart of Baltimore’s Station North Arts District. The performance took place on the first night of Artscape,

Mitchell talked about how this first Baltimore version of the exercise may differ from what has been done in New York.

“I was doing this in New York every four to six weeks for five years and we produced some good work,” Mitchell said. “But this is more community oriented.”

“I was thinking ‘what can I do to increase the interest in this particular district’ and the North Line is right in the middle of this neighborhood,” he said. “It’s all about community for me.”

Mitchell began formulating the idea last year and sent emails to Baltimore-area playwrights, directors and actors.

Espy was one of the few who had previously participated in a 24-hour theatre festival.

“This is easy, because the last one I did, the writers got an idea at 9 p.m. and we basically stayed up all night writing,” Epsey explained. “Here we start at 6:30 and we have to be done by 9, so there’s no sleep deprivation.” On the flip side, Epsey noted that it is harder because you have less time to write.

Wyrick, who just graduated from Towson University and has not yet had a play performed by Run of the Mill, was somewhat more nervous. “We did a couple in school but never on a bus,” she said. Ira Gamerman who is pursuing his PhD in playwriting, agreed: “we have to write a 5-page play every week…but never on a moving vehicle!”

Along with some anxiety, most shared unfamiliarity with city buses. The last time Espy rode the bus was 20 years ago; Wyrick calls herself a professional pedestrian admitting, “I haven’t ever taken the bus before.”

Mitchell, on the other hand has been taking the bus for years. Until recentlyhe had lived in Fells Point and had to take it daily.

“On the bus there are just stories that keep popping up,” Mitchell said. “All these different types of people ride the bus, some people have etiquette and some don’t. Some treat it like their home and there are those individuals who just keep talking to you even when you give them the signal that you don’t want to talk!”

Before getting on the bus, the playwrights randomly drew numbers (1 to 3) which would determine how many characters there would be in their play. Then then they drew from a bunch of headshots for their particular actors.

Espey, who picked the number 1, was somewhat unnerved: “The drama, it’s harder if there’s only one person.” Gamerman, who drew two female actresses, said that while he had some vague plot ideas before “they’ve kinda been blown to bits.”

Around 7:30 the group got off the bus in front of the Enoch Pratt Free Library branch at 1531 West North Avenue to meet with the directors. Mitchell, who was to direct two of the plays, was joined by directors, W. Wamboui Richardson, Sheila Gaskins, Sammie L. Real III and Jamie Kilburn; as with the pairing of playwrights and actors, the playwrights similarly drew the name of their director randomly.

W. Wamboui Richardson who was to direct Sharon Goldner’s play, said he was excited about “the idea of taking theater and putting it on a local platform.” The North Avenue Plays, he said, might get the audience to ask themselves “’Is this really me?’ by centralizing them on North Avenue.”

Real added that “This is really taking theatre back to its roots,” since the playwrights are really just writing it “right out of their limbs.”

After their second ride on the 13, some of the playwrights began tying up the ends of their plays. Without giving away too much, they shared gave a sneak peek at the final product. It was hard to know how much direct inspiration came from fellow passengers and the bus ride itself.

Sharon Goldner, who normally writes short stories, focused her drama on two characters, a man and a woman. The woman has just received a diagnosis of cancer and “she’s riding the bus with the cancer – the man is the cancer,” Goldner said. Goldner said she was inspired by a passenger on the bus, as well as her surroundings.

“There was a sad woman on the bus,” she said. “We were right near Hopkins and we were riding the bus.”

Wyrick said she got the idea for her play, which is about parallel universes, from the ‘no standing forward of the yellow line’ signs. “Buses are places of transition and no one stands still for very long” she added.

Ira Gamerman explained that his play “is about these two women that are trying to find a husband by surveying the men that come on the bus.” He said that while writing, he struggled with the static nature of the bus.

“You want your characters to have goals,” he said, “but a bus doesn’t have a lot of action, so it was a challenge finding something that they could do on the bus, an active goal, instead of just where they’re going.”

Epsey said that when he first got on the bus, he felt that it simply kept going and going and that it was never going to stop. Thus he came up with the idea of a man on a bus trying unsuccessfully to stop the bus.

The man’s life is “going too fast, he has too much to do…you have to let it go for it to come back,” Epsey said. “When you stop trying to make it stop, it stops.”

(Regular MTA bus riders might interpret this plotline as some sort of Zen advice for coping with the chronic problem of buses that don’t come on time.)

Frisino Toohey, meanwhile, came up with a play that  “was triggered by the fact that the bus stopped at the court house.” It was going to be something involving two girls leaving the courthouse where one of the girls’ boyfriend was on trial.

Max Garner said his play consists of three people speaking to each other in “abstract beatnik poetry,” with one of them calling a sports talk radio show.

At around 9 pm the bus rolled to a stop in front of Load of Fun (LOF/t) where the writers and directors were greeted by a cheering group of actors. Mitchell ran off to photocopy the scripts for the actors and the directors meet to organize the next day’s rehearsal schedules. The playwrights were relieved to befinally off the hook.

“I don’t think I know what happens!” said Wyrick, laughing. “I think it’s a comedy.”

The pressure was then on the actors, who had less than 12 hours till the curtain was to go up at the Theater Project.

Ben Brunnschweiler, who will play “Cancer” in Sharon Goldner’s play, said he hoped he could live up to what she envisioned. The role of Cancer, he observed, was going to be tough.

“It’s not a person and you have to develop a full character in such a short time, giving it depth,” he said. “Even if you’re Cancer, you still have feelings!”