Review: The Wikipedia Plays
From Friday, August 3 to Monday, August 6, Ars Nova, a Manhattan-based non-profit theatre company focused on supporting emerging artists, presented The Wikipedia Plays, a series of short, loosely connected plays inspired by 17 Wikipedia entries. The plays were written by Ars Nova's PLAY GROUP, who wanted to close out their inaugural year with an evening of plays incorporating work from all seventeen of the project's playwrights. They had the idea to use Wikipedia as inspiration, and, starting with our article on The Defenestration of Prague (according to the event program, "Because someone smart suggested it and no one knew what it was"), they followed the links on each page and randomly assigned each word or subject to a different writer, with the restriction that each play must be "inspired by a Wikipedia entry," be ten minutes or less in length, and contain a reference to the entry-word or phrase of the play to follow.[1]
- ^ Detailed information on the production comes from the event program.