Chapter 11
Interviews with Producers of Ten-Minute Plays
Artistic Director, Boston Theater Marathon and Boston Playwright’s Theater
Kate Snodgrass is the artistic director of both the Elliot Norton Award–winning Boston Theater Marathon and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the “Home of New Plays in Boston.” The author of the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award–winning play Haiku, she has been recognized with two IRNE Awards for Best New Play and a nomination for the American Theatre Critics Association’s Steinberg Award for Best New Play. She lectures in Playwriting in the Boston University Graduate School and is a member of AEA, AFTRA, and the Dramatists Guild. Acknowledged by Boston’s StageSource in 2001 as a “Theatre Hero,” Kate is a former National Chair of Playwriting at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival; she received the KCACTF’s inaugural Milan Stitt Award as an Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting. Kate is a Playwriting Fellow at the Huntington Theatre Company.
Glenn Alterman: Where did the idea of a ten-minute play festival for your theater come from? Why did you feel it would be successful?
Kate Snodgrass: The idea came from two serendipitous things. First, I had participated in the Circle Repertory Theatre Company’s fund-raiser “The All Day Sucker” in New York a couple of years earlier (I think there were 40 plays involved in that day—and it was supposed to last 10 hours; it lasted 14). Second, my friend Bill Lattanzi and I wanted to get playwrights involved with producers in Boston. We melded the two ideas into one and opted to have all the theater companies (40 then, now 50) involved in producing. We didn’t want to stump for just one theater company—we wanted the community to be involved. What’s good for the community is good for playwrights.
We had no idea if it would be successful, but we were desperate. Surprisingly, after our first press release, the newspapers were calling us, not the other way around. It was an idea whose time had come, and it was standing room only from the first hour.
Alterman: Are ten-minute play festivals difficult to produce and coordinate?
Snodgrass: Not any more, but it takes organizing. When we began with 40 plays (now we do 50 in ten hours), we flew by the seat of our pants at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre—with all the proceeds going to charity (this is still true). We had two small theater spaces at our disposal, so we performed the plays twice each (once in each theater). The scenes changes were coordinated; we had two stage managers and two run crews. If the audience sat in one theater all day long, they could see all the plays; and the playwrights could move back and forth to see both of their performances. Now we stay in one larger venue and perform only once in that theater. It’s easier on our staff and the run crews, too. It’s not as “exciting” (read, scary), but it works like clockwork, because our technical staff is impeccable. Five plays per hour—we’re always on time with minutes to spare!
Alterman: In general, what do you think of ten-minute plays?
Snodgrass: I love them. Not only do audiences adore them—they’re like crackerjacks; you can’t eat just one—but they’re wonderful teaching tools. How to make one thing happen within a given amount of time—dramatists have to know how to do this. The ten-minute play requires dramatic action.
Alterman: Do you think they’re easier or more difficult for playwrights to write?
Snodgrass: They are deceptive. We think we can do it easily—anybody can write ten pages, right? But the genre calls for focus, imagination, and a superior understanding of the three-dimensional space. The ten-minute play is a mini full-length play with all the Aristotelian elements in full force (in absurdist works, too), just truncated into ten minutes. “Just” is the deceptive word here. It sounds easy, but it requires craft.
Alterman: How do you decide which plays will be included in your festivals?
Snodgrass: Our plays—we get over 400 entries every year from all over New England—are read by three people from our theater community (i.e., audience members, actors, directors, designers, producers, you name them) and scored. The highest-scored plays get sent on to a final team of three readers who pick the final 50 plays. These readers are not the same every year, but they are always theater professionals giving of their time. We also offer several playwrights a place in the Boston Theater Marathon—writers like Israel Horovitz, Theresa Rebeck, Robert Brustein, etc. (the list changes every year). These playwrights have earned their place in our community and across the nation.
Alterman: What kind of feedback do you get from your audiences about your ten-minute play festivals?
Snodgrass: We get kudos all around. The Boston Theater Marathon is now a tradition on the Boston theater scene. We showcase literally hundreds of actors and directors, and 50 playwrights get their works performed every year. We are acknowledged by the Boston area newspapers in features and reviews, and anthologies of the BTM are published—first by Samuel French, and now by Smith & Kraus Publishers.
Alterman: Do you have any advice for playwrights who want to write ten-minute plays and get them produced?
Snodgrass: First, write one. See for yourself how difficult and how easy it is. Then I’d band together with other writers, talk some actors into giving you a break, and produce an evening of ten-minute plays (don’t wait for somebody else to acknowledge you; use your power). Invite all and sundry. Word of mouth is the answer to everything in the theater, and audiences want to participate. An evening of ten-minute plays is never boring, and, done right, the ten-minute play pushes the boundaries of theater as we know it.
Contest Director, Theatre Oxford’s National Ten-Minute Play Contest Producer, Theatre Oxford’s Ten-Minute Play Festival
Alice Walker is a vibrant member of the arts community in Oxford, Mississippi. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council as well as the board for VOX Press. She is a member of the board of directors for Theatre Oxford, Oxford’s community theater, and serves as the organization’s managing producer. She is also contest director for Theatre Oxford’s National Ten-Minute Play Contest and producer for the Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival.
Glenn Alterman: Where did the idea of a ten-minute play festival for your theater come from? Why did you feel it would be successful?
Alice Walker: Local playwrights, Neil White and L. W. Thomas, founded the National Ten-Minute Play Contest in 1998. The first grand prize winner was produced in 1999 prior to the production of Neil White’s play Paper. The Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival started in 2000 and featured the grand prize winner from the national contest and locally written plays. The Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival was and still is an ideal way to showcase local playwrights and excite local audiences about productions.
Alterman: Are ten-minute play festivals difficult to produce and coordinate?
Walker: The most difficult thing about producing a ten-minute play festival is being in charge of a large number of people. On average, I oversee five different directors and five different casts. That means I am dealing with five different rehearsal schedules, as well as different set and technical needs, props, and costumes. The key is staying organized so all the plays come together as one complete show.
The good thing about producing a ten-minute play festival is that the whole rehearsal process can be done in a short amount of time. Since a single rehearsal for a ten-minute play is typically not that long, directors can coordinate with each other and schedule one- to two-hour rehearsal slots, say every other day, and have plenty of rehearsal time. Blocking for directors and getting off book for actors takes a lot less time than with a full-length play, so a festival can go up in just a few weeks.
Alterman: In general, what do you think of ten-minute plays?
Walker: I personally love ten-minute plays. The ten-minute play is a wonderful exercise for first-time playwrights, or experienced playwrights, for that matter. A ten-minute play festival is also an excellent way to bring in first-time directors and actors. My favorite thing about producing a ten-minute play festival is the overwhelming number of community members who get involved.
Alterman: Do you think they’re easier or more difficult for playwrights to write?
Walker: I wouldn’t say that a ten-minute play is easier or more difficult to write. In both a ten-minute play and a full-length play, the playwright has to think about the same things—characters, dialogue, plot, etc. The structure is the same for both—setup, conflict, and resolution. The ten-minute playwright just has to execute in a shorter amount of time.
When you are dealing with a ten-page script, it is important to keep things moving. A ten-minute play can seem much shorter than ten minutes if the pacing is good. Otherwise, a ten-minute play can feel like an eternity. For example, a lot of long monologues in a ten-minute play makes it seem longer and often times boring. A talent for editing and being able to create swift-moving dialogue is necessary to write a successful ten-minute play.
Alterman: How do you decide which plays will be included in your festivals?
Walker: Theatre Oxford produces the grand prize winner from the national contest at our annual festival. Four or five plays written by local playwrights are also produced. These local plays are selected either from previous submissions to the national contest or from submissions made directly to the theater for consideration. The local plays are often workshopped before they are produced at the annual festival.
Alterman: What kind of feedback do you get from your audiences about your ten-minute play festivals?
Walker: The Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival is Theatre Oxford’s most well-attended production. Audiences seem to love the format. A night of five or six ten-minute plays easily keeps an audience’s attention. It’s been jokingly said that if you don’t like one play, wait ten minutes and there’ll be another one!
For a small community theater, the large number of actors, directors, and crew involved brings in lots of audience members, not to mention playwrights and their family and friends who attend. I hear from many audience members, year after year, that the Ten-Minute Play Festival is their favorite production of the year.
Alterman: Do you have any advice for playwrights who want to write ten-minute plays and get them produced?
Walker: If you want to write a ten-minute play, remember to keep it simple. One scene and a minimal set seem to work best. Ten-minute plays with scene changes generally do not work. I have seen ten-minute plays with a split stage, going from one scene on stage right to another on stage left, that have worked well, but those plays are still challenging to pull off. Use as few characters as possible. Two to four characters is a good guideline, although some contests require three characters.
Remember, a ten-minute play needs to be compact. Think of it as a mini sitcom, or mini drama, as the case may be. Dialogue is extremely important and needs to have a quick pace and flow well. Try to stay away from lots of long monologues that may slow down the pace or bore the audience.
Keeping it simple does not mean the concept has to be simple. The idea for a ten-minute play can be very abstract. In fact, the ten-minute play format lends itself to abstract subject matter. I have produced ten-minute plays about world leaders playing a game of Monopoly, about ghosts and talking to the dead, and several plays with animals and superheroes as the characters. No subject matter is really off limits when it comes to a ten-minute play.
Feedback is beneficial when writing a ten-minute play. If you can, conduct a workshop for your script by inviting actors and other playwrights to a read-through and take suggestions afterward.
There are many ten-minute play contests across the country. Most contests have a small entry fee, and some award a cash prize to the winner. Submit to as many contests as you can. Also, look into ten-minute play festivals in your area and how to submit your play to be produced. Don’t be afraid of rejection. Just keep writing!
Associate Artistic Director, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Seth Gordon is the associate artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, the main professional theater in its region and the largest professional theater in Missouri. Previously Mr. Gordon was associate artistic director of the Cleveland Play House and associate producer of Primary Stages in New York. He has directed plays at these and many other theaters, including Studio Arena Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Stages Repertory in Houston, and many small theaters in New York, including Ensemble Studio Theatre and Theatre for the New City. He created the New American Writers Group at Primary Stages and has directed and/or produced countless readings of new plays by many of the US’s leading playwrights.
Glenn Alterman: Where did the idea of a ten-minute play festival for your theater come from? Why did you feel it would be successful?
Seth Gordon: The first ten-minute play festival, which, by the way, you participated in, was created at Primary Stages in New York, when I was associate producer in the 1990s. It started when Primary Stages applied for a grant to commission a play about the environment. When we didn’t get the grant we decided to look for ways to talk with our audience about the issue in ways that wouldn’t have the costs of a commission and full production, and the idea of a reading series of plays written especially for the occasion came up. We decided to call it the Planet Project and proceeded to write to about 50 playwrights inviting them to participate. We told them they could take any approach they wished, as long as the play was ten minutes and written especially for us. We told them there was no fee attached but that participation was invitation only and if they wrote us a play we would include it. The list included every writer we’d worked with, along with many of our favorites. We received about twenty-five entries and read them all over three nights. The project was far more successful than anticipated, and so the following year we did the Legacy Project, a reading series of plays about where we’re from, with similar results. The Planet Project was 1995, the Legacy Project was 1996, and the New York Project, the last of these, was 1997.
Alterman: Are ten-minute play festivals difficult to produce/coordinate?
Gordon: They have their particular challenges that are different from producing a full-length play. Also, when we did these projects we only did readings, not full productions. The degree of difficulty will depend on how many plays are being done, the level of production being attempted, and the degree to which the writers are working on the plays up to opening.
Alterman: In general, what do you think of ten-minute plays?
Gordon: I have mixed feelings about them. When done well they can be quite beautiful, but most frankly seem underwritten to me. When we did our projects they were quite successful, and some of the plays were very good, but the success was measured by the participation of the playwrights and audience response, not necessarily by the level of writing we inspired.
Alterman: Do you think they’re easier or more difficult for playwrights to write?
Gordon: My guess is they are more difficult because of the creative limitations involved.
Alterman: How do you decide which plays will be included in your festivals?
Gordon: In the festivals we’ve produced, we handpicked participants and guaranteed that their play would be selected if they wrote it especially for the festival. In the case of a festival that has open submissions my guess would be that the selection process would be about the same regardless of the length of the play.
Alterman: What kind of feedback do you get from your audiences about your ten-minute play festivals?
Gordon: The feedback was uniformly positive, though the positive response was about the level of playwright involved, the volume of plays, and the communal feeling engendered by the very large number of theater artists coming together for one project.
Alterman: Do you have any advice for playwrights who want to write ten-minute plays and get them produced?
Gordon: My feeling is that most producers are not looking for ten-minute plays, unless they happen to be. I would suggest writing plays when you know that someone is looking for them. Otherwise my experience is that ten-minute plays tend not to be produced, or at least they tend not to be produced in a manner that provides a fee for the author.