Otherwise, understand the framework of production constraints for which you are writing. Small cast and minimal props only? You just got closer to that 1%.Īgain, if you are building your own personal repertoire, or looking to go straight to publication, or your name is Tony Kushner and you can have staged whatever you write, then disregard. A cast of 15 with lavish set required? Chance of selection: slim. So what this means is…if you’re out there writing a 10-Minute play…and you want to get it produced as a submitting playwright for an evening of multiple shorts plays…you must understand what you are writing for. This is stereotypical of the fast and frenetic factory of theater fun that is the 10-Minute play festival. Those directors will cast and then spend a few rehearsals before rushing and sweating through a quick, single Cue-to-Cue run by an overworked and stressed technical director all before each individual play is rushed onstage for a single performance. They will then get a bunch of directors to direct those selected 1% of scripts. They will select around 1% of those submissions for performance. They will get inundated with submissions not unlikely totaling around 700. So what happens in a 10-Minute play festival?Ī theater company, seeking to either expand revenue streams or grow audiences or broaden a base of artistic contributors, will decide to produce a 10-Minute play festival. You are more than likely writing for acceptance into a 10-Minute play festival. And most 10-Minute plays today are getting produced by theaters in festivals. You’re writing the 10-Minute play to get produced by theaters. You’re not out there writing for your own literary satisfaction or sense of personal accomplishment. Because I was right in guessing that the attendees, probably like most of you reading, are not writing the 10-Minute play in an isolated vacuum. The youth of America at the theater festival session gave me grim, impatient glares.īut I became instantly hip once I introduced the framework of the 10-Minute Play. The adult folks at The Playwrights’ Center gave me impatient glares. I kicked off both seminars with the same joke regarding the tribulations of a certain playwright who walked into a bar. And beyond exploration…we will dabble with creation! So bring an idea, a character, or a situation you’ve always wanted to see on stage and prepare to weave your next 10-minute play. We will explore the variations of structure, the positing of character and the emotional impact that make up a tantalizing 10 minutes. The short one-act is the bolt of theatrical lightning which has become a prevalent form of theatrical expressiveness. The latter maybe because there wasn’t an intermission?Īnyway, the seminar teaser copy used to entice… I would gauge both sessions as not a total failure since 1) only 5 people fell asleep during my presentations, and 2) no one walked out on me. The second session, the reprise, occurred at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival. The first seminar I taught was at The Playwrights’ Center. Rife with the potential danger of turning you into a psychotic mess.Īnd if you thought writing a 10-Minute Play was all this…try teaching it! Last week I twice taught a seminar on writing the 10-Minute Play. Oh wait, sorry, when I wrote that it was easy, I meant hard. Writing a 10-Minute play is easy! All you have to do is come up with an ingenious idea, figure an inventive and enthralling stage mechanism, employ riveting and tender characters, serve boiling hot action, and implant sensational dialog.
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