Monday evening's (Nov. 7) staged reading of "Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays" was presented for one night only at the New Century Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. Six local actors directed by Wendy Knox read 10 short new plays dealing with issues and attitudes surrounding same-sex marriage. Across the nation and in Sydney, Australia, over 40 theaters with their own local casts performed the same scripts at the same time.

Before the performance, Joan Stein, who produced the event with Richard Frankel, welcomed the far-flung audience by live feed from New York's Minetta Lane Theater, where local actors there were about to read to their local audience. The Tectonic Theater Project co-partnered with the Off-Broadway Minetta Lane.

Most of the plays were comedies that poked fun at stereotypes. For instance, the proverbial Jewish mother. Though many roles have been written about mothers intolerant of their children's sexual orientation, "My Husband" by Paul Rudnick, is just the opposite. Sally Wingert was delightfully zealous as an academic Jewish mother so excited that gay marriage had been made legal in New York state that she places a New York Times wedding announcement for her gay son, Michael (a charmingly befuddled Jim Lichtscheidl). The trouble is he has no plans whatsoever of marrying.

Another Rudnick work, "The Gay Agenda," also has a juicy, wacky woman's role: Mary Abigail Carstairs Sweetbuckle. Phyllis Wright shone as an ultra-conservative who tries a bit too hard not to betray animosity toward her two gay neighbors. However, the more she forces a friendly face, the quicker her hostilities are triggered. This comes in the form of hilarious Freudian slips about home decor, her weight, and irrational fears that her husband may have gay leanings.

In "This Flight Tonight" by Wendy McLeod, Wright and Christiana Clark reeled in the laughs as Allie and Hannah, a Los Angeles lesbian couple about to board a plane to Iowa, where they'll be married. Allie drowns her anxieties about meeting Hannah's family and ponders the depth of commitment that marriage involves.

Clark was the night's real revelation. She has made her mark for powerful dramatic performances in "Bulrusher" at Pillsbury House Theatre and "A Raisin in the Sun" at Starting Gate, but her turn in "This Marriage is Saved" by Joe Keenan was deliciously mischievous. She and Harry Waters Jr. ignited comic electricity. In an interview format, Reverend Hank (Waters), a preacher who has been "healed" of his gayness, is obviously controlled by his wife, Sue (Clark). She asserts that "love and shame" are what makes their marriage work.

"On Facebook" by Doug Wright dramatized actual online conversations between gay-marriage sympathizers and conservative Christians, but the play felt unfinished. Two other highly accomplished playwrights -- Neil LaBute and Jeffrey Hatcher -- also contributed promising works that seriously lacked development. LaBute's "Strange Fruit' is so laden with graphic sexual imagery that it undermines the poignancy it seeks to elicit. Hatcher's "White Marriage" attempts to comment on a wife who thinks her husband appears to be gay. An interesting idea that needs more examination.

The evening's richest offering was Patrick Bailey's touching delivery of the solo play, "London Mosquitoes" by Tectonic Artistic Director, Moises Kaufman. A man reflects on his nearly 50-year relationship with a man he met in college in the wake of JFK's assassination. They were never wed but their relationship endured longer than many heterosexual marriages. The mosquito metaphor, however, was a bit tortured. It compares human evolution to insect mutations in the London Underground.

The gay marriage ceremony itself was the subject of three solid works. "The Revision" by Jordan Harrison, which began the evening, cleverly considers what the words of the vows at a gay wedding might be. "A Traditional Wedding" by Mo Gaffney contrasts views of how gay marriages might be ritualized. The evening closed with "Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words" by Jose Rivera, a celebratory vision of a gay wedding.

After the curtain call, the live feed resumed from New York with a post-show discussion with the playwrights. The feeling was upbeat but there was concern expressed that more playwrights of color and women playwrights should have been represented.