The City’s Festival of Playwrights kicked off last weekend with shows by local playwrights at Lawrence Community Theatre and EMU Theatre. At EMU, the annual 10-Minute Play Festival had an evening of bodies, bullies and bears, with a devil or two thrown in.

“Real Dungeons and Dragons,” written and directed by Dan Spurgin, asks the question: “Can real life be played as one plays Dungeons and Dragons?” The geeky role-playing gamers try to finally talk to the real-life girl and best the school bully in bumbling but endearing ways.

The socially contradictory world of a certain big-box store is parodied in Dean Bevan’s tightly written “Wol-Mort,” with a hapless “Wol-Mort” customer trying to get his shopping done. He is accosted by the cheery greeter, the disgruntled employee, the environmental activist, the local businessman and the woman driven crazy by the Wol-Mort shopping environment, most of them predicting civilization’s ruin by Wol-Mort. However, even as they decry its existence, they are shopping and working at the store, proving the desire for a convenient bargain is sometimes more powerful than ideals.

“Lemonade,” written and directed by Rachel Sorrels, departed from the evening’s craziness with a pleasant play about accepting the risks of life – one of which is always death. “William” (David Butterfield), driving to a funeral, picks up a hitchhiker (Bailey Slater) who gently persuades him to accept that it is his own death he must face.

The program’s first half ended with Nathan Towns’ “A Skeleton in the Closet,” directed by Jeff Sorrels. The slightly ambiguous “Skeleton” featured a man trapped in a room of hell confronting guilt over killing his friend.

More guilt, sin and murder dominated the evening’s second half with “A Sunday Afternoon at the Bar,” by Marie Lyddon, directed by Gwethalyn Williams. An assassin walks into a bar and meets … well, she’s not sure. She’s late and can’t remember her code phrase. Is the man she meets her target or her contact? In perhaps one or two too many reversals of direction, the assassin (Tonia Schoen) finally decides it is not this man’s (Pete Mapes) lucky day.

The 10-Minute play concept itself was parodied in Feloniz Lovato-Winston and Eamon Winston’s “Ten Minutes in Heaven.” When a Young Woman walks out of the scene, her scene partner must face the Collective Voice of the audience (Tonia Schoen) alone. The funny premise takes an odd turn when the girl returns with a bear. One never knows what will happen in a 10-minute play.

The deftly plotted “It Happens Every Saturday,” by Jeff Sorrels and Ron Willis, explored the worlds of suburban domesticity … in a “Desperate Housewives” kind of way. Inveterate raconteur “Harry” (Andy Stowers) delays his golfing buddies every Saturday, assuring them that he can always explain his tardiness to his wife, unaware that she would rather he stay away all Saturday afternoon for reasons of her own.

The evening ended with the hilarious “Dry Heat” by Stowers and Adri Pendergrass. The devil needs a date, so where does he go? On the Dating Game, of course!

The Playwrights Festival continues next weekend at Lawrence Community Theatre and EMU.