Kansas University student Whitney Rowland has been invited to present her play, Suicide

Of all the ways to kill yourself, drowning in a punchbowl doesn’t necessarily come to mind.

It took playwright Whitney Rowland awhile to come up with the creative plot for her short play, but the brainstorming paid off. This week the Kansas University student from Olathe is in Washington, D.C., where she’ll be recognized nationally – and possibly grab some cash – for her 10-minute play “Suicide by Punchbowl” at the 39th annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

“Ten-minute plays are hard to write because you only have 10 minutes to tell a good story,” says KU English professor Paul Stephen Lim, artistic director of KU’s English Alternative Theatre and former winner of the KCACTF National Student Playwriting Award.

In “Suicide by Punchbowl,” a couple is fighting and the husband, Virgil, is packing his things to leave his wife, Jenny. Their marriage has fallen apart because Jenny’s controlling tendencies have driven away the loving romance that the two once shared.

“For a 10-minute play, she gives us really a good history of a particular marriage,” Lim says.

Jenny continues to rattle off reasons why Virgil can’t leave her. For example, she’s already bought all the Christmas gifts for next year. It’s August, and the square footage of their house is too large for one person. As Virgil continues to ignore Jenny’s pleas, she eventually tries to drown herself in the couple’s punchbowl.

“In real life, Whitney is bubbly and very effervescent, and some of that comes through in everything that she writes,” Lim says. “For a young person, she also has a great deal of understanding of the things that go wrong in life and what separates us and what brings us back together.”

Rowland has made four trips to the regional competition, each time with a different play. She started writing “Suicide by Punchbowl” in high school and has been working on it for more than five years. Initially, the setting for the play was the middle of a lake. Rowland kept playing around with the idea of water, using a large bucket to signify a lake. Then she tried multiple buckets of water and eventually came up with idea of using a punchbowl.

“People don’t expect some pretty actress to stick her face in a bowl of water,” Rowland says.

In January and February, KCACTF holds eight regional competitions that allow university theater programs to present their work, especially new or student-written pieces. Jurors usually choose four or five finalists in each category to perform at the national festival. For the 10-minute play competition, each of the eight regions receives more than 100 submissions, and this year five finalists were chosen.

The winner of the national 10-minute play competition will receive $1,000 and membership in the Dramatists Guild of America.