Seven postmodern plays made their fittingly postmodern debut in the lobby of Margaret Jacks Hall last night. Audience members were seated inside the performance space and were, at times, just inches away from the actors, who wielded daggers, glitter and, occasionally, Oreos.

The seven plays, directed and produced by PWR 2 instructor and English department lecturer Kevin DiPirro, are a part of the nation-wide premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “365 Days/365 Plays,” which is making its debut this year at several “networks” of universities and theaters worldwide.

Parks began writing “365 Days/365 Plays” just months after she became the first black woman to win a Pulitzer prize for her two-man play, “Topdog/Underdog.” In order to complete “365,” Parks wrote a short play between one and five pages each day for an entire year, from November 13, 2002 to November 12, 2003.

Under the guidance of DiPirro, Stanford tackled Week 29 of Parks’ work as part of the Bay Area network premiere of “365.” The Bay Area premiere was coordinated by a number of local theatrical organizations, including Z Space Studio, which initially approached DiPirro about hosting a week at Stanford. DiPirro decided to take on Week 29 in order to coordinate the debut with week 9 of the Spring quarter, which allowed him to involve past and present students from his PWR 2 course, Family Drama.

After using the Week 29 plays as a teaching model during the first week of the quarter, DiPirro recruited interested students to work on the plays outside of class. As both director and producer, DiPirro pulled together the shows in the lobby of Margaret Jacks using a group of five talented student actors.

On Thursday night, DiPirro’s production filled the lobby of Margaret Jacks to the brim, making use of every available space, including the walls, balcony, staircase and elevator. The plays began with a stunning entrance by a feather-clad Emily Davis ‘09, who emerged from the elevator and proclaimed, “I am El Fenix!”

The plays proceeded in a similarly zany, self-conscious fashion, filling a half-hour with unabashedly physical comedy and tragedy, punctuated by dialogue that was brief, but incisive. Drawing from Parks’ elaborate stage directions, DiPirro made some bold choices of his own, integrating clunky props into the production and creating a uniform aesthetic that was certainly in line with the mood of the plays.

One of the standouts of the evening was play number three, “The War to End All Wars Is Almost Over,” featuring Davis and Zach Chotzen-Freund ‘09. The only spoken line was an in-unison “Whew.” The rest of the scene featured the two, obviously a couple, making occasional painful eye contact between bouts of seemingly self-induced pain. While Davis’ pain was clearly turned inward, Chotzen-Freund’s own angst was displayed bodily in a tremendous demonstration of his capacity as a physical actor. Both performances achieved palpable reactions from the audience.

The other highlights of the production, “Red Blanket” and “The Script,” also featured largely physical blocking, which DiPirro focused on extensively during the rehearsal process. DiPirro even stepped onstage during “Red Blanket” to perform alongside Chotzen-Freund in a physically explosive scene, in which DiPirro was mock-strangled before a blanket-bearing dove arrived from the heavens.

Needless to say, the pieces, which DiPirro described as displaying “typical Suzan-Lori Parks hyper-realism,” aren’t exactly straightforward, but several apparent themes strung them together. Unlike postmodernist blather that leaves the viewer confused, these works were carefully crafted, well-aimed postmodernism that left the audience affected. DiPirro observed that the theme of authorship was heavy throughout the plays of Week 29.

“One theme seems to be the relationship between the writer and the creation, how they take place in one’s head and how they take form in the script,” said DiPirro. “Another theme is violence and struggle, both creative struggle and pragmatic, quotidian struggle.”

The first play, “El Fenix,” featured a character named Writer, who edited a script for one of her characters, thus drastically changing the audience response. DiPirro chose to keep the Writer character onstage for the entire production in order to highlight Parks’ own tangible involvement in the plays.

Not only was Parks tangibly involved, but the audience and bystanders were as well. Thanks to the intimacy of the space, passersby became part of the show, including a man on a bicycle who arrived in the elevator during the middle of the show, and a few confused undergrads who stumbled over audience members. The actors also became involved with the audience, handing out Oreos on a platter during one scene and acting out physical violence on a bench where audience members were sitting during another.

“The audience is so much a part of the show,” said Davis. “There can’t be a fourth wall.”

The premiere of “365” is in process in several global “networks,” including a United Kingdom network, a Bay Area network, and a University network. Within each of these networks, various theatres and communities sign up to perform an entire week of the play. Parks specified no particular order for the plays, but most networks have chosen to perform the weeks in order from one to 52. The premieres will conclude by November 12 of this year.

Week 29 of 365 Days/365 Plays will run again at 7 p.m. on June 1 and 2 in the lobby of Margaret Jacks and at 12:30 p.m. on June 1 in the rear courtyard of Margaret Jacks.