The 26th Annual One Act Play Contest has now concluded and we’re excited to announce this year’s 1st place winner: Tino Mori’s Groundnut Stew! 2nd place was awarded to Sam Chapman’s Junglers and Sam Gelband’s Skin Like Iron placed 3rd.

The three finalist plays were first selected by a panel of five theatre students and one faculty member in the fall. Each selected playwright should undoubtedly feel accomplished for being showcased in the contest as their three plays represent what the selection committee deemed the most exciting of all submitted scripts.

Mori’s comedy centers around a living room where five languid friends await a meal of stew and lamb shank prepared by the host. When a homicide detective suffering from “clairvoyance” stumbles in on the friendly dinner party sans dead body, a moment of confusion ensues. Her questions elicit candid responses from each of the guests – but perhaps they share too much. New and past loves, a neglected peanut allergy, social constructs, and mispronounced first names suggest that each have motive for the foretold murder.

Brilliantly performed, directed, and designed and furnished throughout with hilarious interactions between the characters, Groundnut Stew certainly stood out this weekend as one of the most carefully-crafted works in recent One Act Play Contest history. Was it a self-fulfilled prophecy or did the detective really have meta-cognitive powers? Whatever the case, audiences will have trouble forgetting how Pstephanie’s rant made us all laugh out loud in spite of its convoluted incomprehensibility and how the exaggerated ding dongs drawled out in place of the doorbell never got old.

Thanks to everyone who attended and voted! We hope to see you next year. Please do join me in congratulating everyone involved in these three wonderful plays.