Waters and Katigbak said the playwrights were not given specific prompts, except that their monologues should be “of the moment.” Given that they were created during the pandemic, isolation — and an examination of how loneliness metastasizes and manifests when family and friends all but abandon you — pervades almost all of the works.In a round-table discussion earlier this month, the actors said that living through the last few years has made them intimately familiar with the feeling.“My mother, who turned 97 in August, sits at home and watches TV all day because all her friends are gone,” said Glenn Kubota, who will appear in Iizuka’s monologue. “To see what she has to do on a daily basis just to amuse herself is really eye opening. I’m getting a glimpse of what maybe I will be facing 10, 20, years from now.”Many of the works are also at least somewhat autobiographical. And a few of the playwrights, who are all younger than 60, have created characters that resemble one of their parents. In some cases, in the process of acting, editing and rehearsing, the characters have evolved as their creators have reflected more deeply on themselves and those close to them.The monologue by Iizuka, whose well-regarded “36 Views” opened at the Public almost two decades ago, features a Japanese man who, in peeling back the layers of his life, recounts the time a bomb fell on his house leading him to wander around Tokyo and end up inside a candy shop.Iizuka said the character is strongly influenced by her father, who died in December 2020. “It’s about trying to find joy and pleasure, but also running up against your own mortality,” she said.She shared photos of him with the show’s creative team, who in turn provided them to Kubota. Iizuka said the actor has an “uncanny ability” to capture her father’s “feisty, tart-tongued humor.”