This Saturday, as part of Family Weekend, student-led theater group Major Arcana will present its annual collection of ten-minute plays. Though the overall theme is music, the showcase includes a variety of pieces from musicals to satires to student-written shows.

“Three Roses,” written and directed by sophomore theater arts and peace and global studies major Travis Milliman, happens to be nearly all three. The piece, a satire of the musical diva, culminates with a rendition of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

“It’s a theoretical episode of ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show,’” Milliman said, “with guests Patti LuPone, Bette Midler and Ethel Merman discussing their experiences playing Mama Rose [a character from ‘Gypsy’]. Their egos soon swell and it turns into a disaster and catfight.

“It makes fun of the diva,” he continued. “Everyone’s worked with this character.”

Milliman has directed in the past but says that writing a show proved especially difficult.

“It’s only ten minutes, but I spent two months writing it,” he said. “I had to focus on comedic timing and character development while also putting together a cohesive piece.”

Junior theater arts and English major Ryan Bannen likewise wrote a play of his own, but this is his directorial debut.

“When I wrote it, I had a certain vision of it,” Bannen said. “Then when I started directing, I had another vision, so I’ve tried mixing the two together.”

Bannen’s piece, “Love Song,” is the story of an Emmy-winning songwriter whose new composition makes her fiance jealous. She attempts to comfort him and, as Bannen puts it, “comedy ensues.”

“I really like comedy,” he explained, “and I looked at a lot of scripts over the summer. Then the theme was announced and I couldn’t find a ten-minute play about music that I liked, so I wrote my own.

“My favorite part of the directing process,” Bannen said, “is getting to know the actors and what they’re capable of doing. We have a lot of fun.”

Despite the theme of music, only one of the shows, “The Charmed Life,” is a full-blown musical. Directed by junior psychology major Natasia White and sophomore theater arts and English major Kahlil Russell-Starks, “The Charmed Life” centers on a girl fed up with her perfect life until she meets a strange man that may have had something to do with it.

“We like to call it ‘The Circle of Creepin’,’” White said.

With the amount of students involved in their portion of the presentation, White and Russell-Starks may very well have the toughest job of all.

“Timing has been a challenge,” Russell-Starks said, “especially with five actors, [a pianist] and getting space and time.”

That being said, both acknowledge the actual rehearsal process has made everything worthwhile.

“I love working with the cast,” White noted. “They’ll have ideas we wouldn’t have even thought of.”

The fourth play contributes to the overall diversity of the selections in that it’s actually a ten-minute sc0.25“I can only do so much,” Chiappone said, “so I asked Isaac to come up with something for background music. It’s so much better than I could have come up with in a short time. That excites me.”

Though it’s his first time directing, Chiappone expresses what most directors feel when putting together something special.

“When you start, you have an idea of the finished product will look like,” he said. “If you’re lucky, what you’ll end up with is even better.”

The ten-minute play festival takes place Saturday, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center