Playwrights

Updated October 16, 2009

Region III

10 Minute Play Festival

Deadline November 1, 2009

10 Minute Playwrights

Once again, Region III's 10 Minute Play Festival will feature staged readings of the six plays selected as finalists in the competition. The plays will be auditioned, rehearsed, developed, and performed, all at the festival.

Finalist playwrights (and their scripts!) will be teamed up with selected student directors, student actors, student stage managers, and faculty advisor/mentors from schools throughout the region.

Auditions will be held for all roles immediately following the preliminary rounds of the Irene Ryan competition. Any students registered for the festival (except Irene Ryan semi-finalists) may audition for the 10 Minute Play Festival.

This exciting collaborative opportunity is focused on the process of working with the playwright to take the original script from "page to stage." The experience allows the entire production team an exciting and educationally stimulating means of "creating" new theatre at the festival as they actively collaborate with students and faculty from other schools.

Guidelines

Each region of KCACTF will have UP TO six ten-minute plays at their regional festival, but no more than six.
This is a reading award. Awards will be given based on the reading of the script prior to its production. The production of the script, while a valuable learning experience, will not affect the award selection.
Up to two plays per playwright can be submitted.
Each play submitted must be submitted as an email attachment as a PDF file to the National Playwriting Program (NPP) Chair.
Each PDF script submitted should NOT contain the playwright's name. Name and contact info are to be in the email text only, not on the script itself.
Playwrights whose work is chosen for the festival must be in attendance at the regional festival.
The reading by judges who make the final, or "winning," choice, must happen in residence at the regional festival to accommodate last minute rewrites.
All plays must be read by three people, not to include the NPP Chair or NPP Vice Chair. All faculty readers will read plays only from institutions other than their own.
Ten minute plays submitted need to be accompanied by a Cover Sheet Submission.

Submission

10-Minute play is 10 pages or fewer (12 point font).

Playwrights of ten-minute plays should submit TWO DOCUMENTS:

1) the cover sheet completed with all appropriate information and

2) the script in Word or PDF format, which should have a TITLE PAGE but no author or school identification.

SUBMIT THE COVER SHEET AND SCRIPT TO THE NPP (NATIONAL PLAYWRITING PROGRAM) CHAIR IN YOUR REGION ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT 10-MINUTE PLAYS TO THE NATIONAL OFFICE.* There is a limit of two plays per playwright. Students can submit up to two plays in each category (ten minute, one act, and full length) for a maximum of six plays total. There is no charge for entering the contest this year.

*except for 10-Minute Plays that are a part of a Ken Ludwig Award Entry.

Steve Feffer
National Playwriting Program Chair
One Act and Full Length
10 Minute Play Submissions
Regional Officers

A Brief Note on Ten-Minute Plays

by Gary Garrison
Chair, National Playwriting Program (NPP)
KCACTF Division Head of Playwriting
First Look Theatre Company
Goldberg Dept. of Dramatic Writing
Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

A Ten-Minute play is a play with at least two characters that is not a scene, skit, or sketch. Structurally, it should have a beginning, middle, and end, just like any good one-act or full-length play. Reaching beyond the surface, the text should be enriched with subtext. Since we only have ten minutes to bring the story full circle, a dramatic conflict should be posed as quickly as possible. The resolution of that conflict is what plays out across the remaining pages. The true success of a Ten-Minute play is reliant on the writer’s ability to bring an audience through the same cathartic / entertainment experience that a good one-act or full-length play accomplishes; i.e., sympathetic characters with recognizable needs encompassed within a resolvable dramatic conflict.

While not wanting to oppress anyone’s creativity, recognize that a Ten-Minute Play will undoubtedly be presented in an evening of ten-minute plays. Therefore, elaborate settings, multiple characters, extravagant production values, etc., could conceivably eliminate your play from consideration.

Finally, do your readers a favor: ten minutes means eight or nine pages, but certainly no more than ten pages. READ YOUR PLAY OUT LOUD to see how it times out using standard playwriting format and 12 pt. Times New Roman or Courier font.