If you have trouble sitting through a play without falling asleep or thinking of something else, then Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is the perfect play for you. Actually, it’s 30 plays fit into 60 minutes, so you won’t even have time to fall asleep because each play lasts at most 3 minutes.

Too Much Light… is performed by the New York Neo-Futurists every Friday and Saturday night at 10:30 PM at the Kraine Theater. The show is engaging and interactive from the start. A Neo-Futurist sits at the door to personally welcomes you. She asks for your name and gives you a wacky name like Soup’s On! or Lickity on a sticker. The members of the cast dress casually and chat with the audience before the show starts. They use real names and wear “real”clothes when they perform. Before the show, a menu is given to you by a cast member, introducing the cast and has a list of 30 plays, with titles like Da Da R & D: An Exploration of Futurism Colliding with De Stijl with Limited Knowledge on Either Subject or Time Spent Learning About It and How’d That Uncooked Chicken Get In My Peanut Butter? You really feel as if you’re part of the show. The small but cozy theater’s stage is on the same level as the seats and cast members sit on the steps next to the audience when they aren’t performing in plays. You feel the floor shake when they run up and down the stairs. It really is a very interactive show. Audience members are pulled up to participate in plays often.

The order of 30 plays is chosen by the audience (they perform the first number they hear the audience call out when they say “Curtain!”), as it says on the bottom of the menu, “Order By Number”. Sometimes they don’t even finish all 30, so it’s up to you to make sure that you see the play that you want to. I found that aspect of the performance to be disappointing. Sure, it was exciting to see if we could see all 30 plays, but when our last play was cut off by the buzzer, I felt as if my experience was abruptly cut short. I wanted to see what I missed and finish all 30 plays. New plays are written every week and added to the menu for next week’s show so it’s not guaranteed that the play you missed will be there next week.

The potpourri of plays is refreshing and surprising. We went from enthusiastically appreciating a toy squirrel to listening to chilling whispering in the dark. There was a news reports given on the latest peanut butter scare while an audience member ate peanut butter on a cracker and an improvised play on how everything is related to Obama. Some plays were abstract and out of the ordinary, while some were political and relevant to everyday life. Whatever is your cup of tea, you’re bound to find it in at least one of the 30 plays on the ever-surprising menu.