Playwrights
Ten Minute Play Festival
Updated September 27, 2010
Program
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
Ten Minute play is 10 pages or fewer (12 point font).
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.
How to Apply: Fill Out Application Components A & B
PLAYWRIGHT'S TEN MINUTE PLAY COVER SHEET
A. ONLINE APPLICATION COMPONENT
Fill out the online application form above to identify the playwright.
NOTE: The Title of Script in this form must match that of the emailed script.
B. EMAIL APPLICATION COMPONENT
SCRIPT
(Text document, DOC or PDF.)
Submit the script document to the National Playwriting Program Chair, Region III (Steve Feffer), and to the NPP Program Vice-Chair (Scott Irelan). Email to:
steve.feffer@wmich.edu, scottirelan@augustana.edu
NOTE: The script should have a TITLE PAGE but no author or school identification. The title identifies the script with the playwright. Do not submit Ten Minute Plays to the National Office (unless they are part of a Ken Ludwig Award Entry).
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.
