Watch the 2026 Festival
The Chestnut Street Playhouse (Norwich, CT) was home to the Southeastern Connecticut One Day Play Festival on Saturday, June 27, 2026. You can watch the final performance here!
Get Involved in 2027!
Want to be involved with this event in 2027? Email us at [email protected] to let us know! Official sign-ups will open in early 2027.
What is the One Day Play Festival?
The One Day Play Festival has a long history in southeastern Connecticut; originally hosted by The Lobster Players in the late 2000s, Josh Kelly and his sister, Sara, have taken up the mantle of the festival since 2014, first bringing the festival under the umbrella of Project Bright (a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention efforts and fundraising), then as a standalone event at East Lyme High School raising money for local nonprofits and the high school's theatre program, and more recently in partnership with local nonprofit theaters, raising money for their operational needs. Sara has been involved with this long history from nearly the very beginning, and Josh got involved first as a performer in 2010. The rest, as they say, is history!
The festival has always followed the same basic structure: a number of writers are given one line and five props that they have 12 hours to weave into an original one act play of their making. In the morning, when their 12 hours has expired, they meet with an assigned director who will work through the rest of the day to bring the assigned writer's play to life. Thereafter, directors meet with their actors and use ~11 hours to rehearse the scene, all in preparation for a single, live final performance that night. The end product is an excitingly unique-in-all-the-world set of performances put on by local artists. The creativity that goes into such one act plays is unparalleled, and the raw nature of the performances only makes the laughs bigger and the sad moments all the deeper. We hope that you will come see the next One Day Play Festival!
The festival has always followed the same basic structure: a number of writers are given one line and five props that they have 12 hours to weave into an original one act play of their making. In the morning, when their 12 hours has expired, they meet with an assigned director who will work through the rest of the day to bring the assigned writer's play to life. Thereafter, directors meet with their actors and use ~11 hours to rehearse the scene, all in preparation for a single, live final performance that night. The end product is an excitingly unique-in-all-the-world set of performances put on by local artists. The creativity that goes into such one act plays is unparalleled, and the raw nature of the performances only makes the laughs bigger and the sad moments all the deeper. We hope that you will come see the next One Day Play Festival!