Although Oberlin is currently snowed in and students are quite literally frozen in the state of Ohio, last weekend’s Frozen In Ohio: Oberlin Shorts Play Festival, an annual event of one-act plays written and directed by students, was warmly received.

Dramatic play Interrogation Room, directed by Joel Solow, opened the program. Lines were penned effectively by Baraka Noel, OC ’06, and delivered convincingly by first-years Amelia Fortunato and Peter Weiss. The story takes place in an isolated room where two apparent suspects are being held for multiple murders. The two characters, Rebecca (Fortunato) and Adam (Weiss) play on each other’s fears in an intense ping-ponging mind game: Who will crack first?

At first, Rebecca and Adam act just as expected — a little nervous, a bit confused and trying to provide support for each other: “We have to wait it out together,” says Adam. As the play advances, the tension increases with the actors’ body language. However, some lines were stumbled, and uttered profanities seemed just a tad out of place. Nevertheless, Fortunato and Weiss permeated Little Theatre with an intense atmosphere.

Junior Lena Dunham’s The Cult of True Womanhood, directed by junior Alyse Frosch, takes place “in a house in the woods near a liberal arts college.” Dunham pokes fun at things that only true Obies understand, such as gender neutral bathrooms and the difficulty of obtaining off-campus status. Underclassman Janie (first-year Lucy Engelman), says that being in gender neutral bathrooms “makes the paint on my toes peel.”

Betty (junior Amanda Caggiano) was the perfect, uptight character. High-strung and slightly awkward, Caggiano was both hilariously interrogative and undyingly feminist.

There was a particularly notable comic bit involving a huge swath of green tulle which pulled laughter from the audience: Engelman and first-year Genevieve Apfel as Renee waltzed opposite each other across the stage in a dramatic, sexually-charged interplay. Weiss as Sal morphed into an awkward, guffawing male who was the guest of resident Madge (first-year Merry Scholl).

Betty spends a good amount of time pretending to care about making Sal feel welcome, but the hot/cold attitude brings an abrupt end to his visit. Madge, clearly frustrated by lack of a male companion, fights with Betty. While Scholl portrayed her huffiness well, she hit her peak in the last play.

Figures on the Cake by Meg Lindsey touched on a number of nerves with its sensitive subject matter of cheating significant others. Directed by first-year Tommy Morello, the story follows a confused Sarah (senior Ellie Kilpatrick), who hashes out a hairy situation with Brian (first-year David Petrick). Sarah’s brother, Mark (first-year Henry Whittaker) is marrying a woman whose promiscuity has earned her the title “the village bicycle,” as Brian eloquently put it.

Whittaker has an appropriately angelic face when he speaks lovingly of his new wife with an unfortunate ignorance for her apt sexual activity. It turns out that the couple has decided to wait until their honeymoon night. However, as Sarah and Brian both know, his blushing bride has been everything but close-legged.

Kilpatrick built the tension well, save for one short episode by the bar where every word was accompanied by awkward, symmetrical hand motions. Lindsey’s kicker occurs when Kilpatrick spills the beans and finally reveals that she had been coerced into engaging in sexual relations with her brother’s new wife.

Should Sarah tell her brother about his wife’s escapades or hope that she will mend her ways?

Weiss made yet another appearance as Joe, an old putz in junior Emma Dumain’s The Reunion, directed by Caggiano. Fortunato played Rachel opposite Weiss again, but in a drastically different role. Joe visits his daughter, Rachel, after learning that his ex-wife has passed away. Fortunato convincingly portrayed an anguished character with a bleeding heart for her late mother and sympathy for her son, Sam (Whittaker), who has experienced the loss of a grandmother and years of angst from an absent father.

Delicate family relationships are exposed in Dumain’s crafty lines. Rachel accuses her father of having been irresponsible and, at the present time, still ignorant of family happenings.

“I never allowed such a word [Jesus] in my house. Moses, yes. Jesus, never,” said Joe, defending himself as a good father.

Although Weiss’s character seems to finally open his heart, at the end he still turns his back on the family, leaving Rachel’s home despite the pleas of his grandson. Dumain and Caggiano put a very real situation on the stage, stirring up problems that in many families exist only behind closed doors.

The festival concluded with the unsettling play Lunchtime, by sophomore Andrew Mooney, directed by sophomore Sarah Frank. Yvonne (Scholl) and Albert (Morello) function under very odd pretenses: Both seem to be very well-read and the verbal play that spews from their mouths invites close attention. There are no windows or doors, and there are no clocks; absolutely no devices keep track of time.

Albert discusses time in a very detached manner, scoffing at others who live their life by the clock.

“Like I said, the world is so hopelessly dependent on its timetable,” he said.

While Albert and Yvonne pride themselves in their liberating lifestyle, free of any time constraints, their ironic situation quickly becomes clear to the audience.

Despite the absence of a clock, there is indeed a schedule by which the two abide. The strangest thing about their existence is their constant dispute about their eating habits. A bell rings which prompts the two to fly over to the table with silverware; a second bell rings and a tray is pushed through a slot with two prepared meals; a third bell rings to indicate that it is time to start eating.

Desperation ensues in the two when the bell fails to ring for an unspecified period of time. When it finally does sound, no food appears. Scholl and Morello portrayed the irony well. Scholl reached her peak in “Lunchtime” with Mooney’s crafty words spouting from her mouth in quick succession.

The entire play preys on human neuroses with fantastic mind games between the two wacky characters, using word plays between figurative and literal meaning, as well as fast verbal sparring.

“Because you are a raving idiotic lunatic on a good day,” says Yvonne.

The Oberlin Shorts transformed the very little Little Theatre into a crafty box of creativity.

This production was the culmination of creative efforts over this past Winter Term, a project led by Theater Professor Justin Emeka. Students submitted plays for review; upon selection, talent auditions were held.

The project aims to open and maintain a dialogue between the student playwright and the student director in order to incorporate the writer’s original view for the piece into the director’s creative vision. Such close interaction allows for script changes if the director and playwright deem it necessary and supports a true portrayal in terms of staging.

The five short plays performed by a small group proved a hearty success in the freezing weather.