10 Minute Play Festival

Playwrights
Region III 10-Minute Play Festival
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 for the 10-Minute Play Festival
1. Each region of KCACTF will have UP TO six ten-minute plays at their regional festival, but no more than six.
2. 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.
3. Up to two plays per playwright can be submitted.
4. Each play submitted must be accompanied by a blind title page secured to the script with the title of the play only, and a detachable title page with all other author information and title of play.
5. Playwrights whose work is chosen for the festival must be in attendance at the regional festival.
6. The reading by judges who make the final, or “winning,” choice, must happen in residence at the regional festival to accommodate last minute rewrites.
7. 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.
8. Ten minute plays submitted need to be accompanied by $20 (cash or check made out to: ACTF Management, Ltd., Region III sent to Steve Reynolds, Wittenberg Theatre, P.O. Box 720, Springfield, OH 45501) only if the student's college or university has not already entered a participating or associate production during this calendar year. Submissions via e-mail attachment are due November 1 to sreynolds@wittenberg.edu.

Entry Forms are required for Playwriting Program Competition
In an effort to streamline and improve the process for entering new student-written scripts into Region III Playwriting Program Competitions, we have developed a comprehensive "Playwriting Program Competition Entry Form" Please note that a completed copy of this form MUST accompany EVERY script that is submitted by student playwrights. Submissions are due via e-mail attachment to sreynolds@wittenberg.edu by November 1.

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.

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