THE TEN-MINUTE PLAY

Behold below a feast of ten-minute play possibilties. There are over 300 ten-minute plays to peruse! Many of these collections are available for purchase as the Bookie, and all are on reserve at Holland Library. .

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Remember that choices for the final ten-minute plays are on a first come-first serve basis. Click here to see which plays have been taken.

GREAT CHOICES AHEAD

Regardless of your track of study, the culminating project for Dra361 is the direction of a ten-minute play. The specific requirements for this final culminating project are:

playing time, no less than 7 minutes, and no more than 15 minutes.
Cast size must be a minimum of two actors.
Actors must be available for both in class rehearsals and technical rehearsals--no exceptions. See syllabus for specific dates.

WHY THE TEN-MINUTE PLAY?
Why not a ten-minute play? Experience with previous Dra 361 final plays has proven that there is a direct correlation between length and quality. Students working with longer scripts have a considerably less successful track record than those working with shorter scripts. Here are the advantages of working with the ten-minute play:

Play selection. It's much easier to shop around for the play of your dreams if you can read a whole bunch of scripts in a relatively short amount of time. Typically the plays are in collections of 25 or so plays, which makes it far more convenient than perusing the single acting editions of the longer one-act plays we have typically had on reserve.

Scheduling. With a ten-minute play time management and rehearsal scheduling are greatly streamlined.

Workshopping. Because of the shorter playing time, it will be possible to perform and critique these plays in class before we get into the technical rehearsal phase. In the past, with longer scripts this was impossible.

Fair Play. In the past, someone who directed a 60 minute play may have felt that they were, in some cases, unfairly compared to those who may have chosen to direct say a 15 minute play. They argue, "Sure, I could have probably done that well myself, if all I had to concentrate on was 15 minutes of material!" Leaving aside the issue, that the choice to do a longer work was their very own, the new time limits will eliminate these feelings of inequality. For those of you who enjoy a good grumble now and then...fear not that all grumbling will go away forever, since we all know perfectly well that grumbling is at the very heart of human nature.

More class time for weekly exercises. Since there is less material to rehearse, there is a little more time available for weekly class exercises, which in a beginning class is very valuable. This semester we have been able to add two new exercises which I suspect will have an enormous payoff.

Actor-Friendly Material. Less material means less demands on your actors. It's not unusual for beginning actors to bite off more than they can really chew. Unfortunately what begins as a problem for an actor ends up being a problem for you as director. This, complicated by the fact, that the stakes for most of your actors is comparatively low (at the most they will be getting extra-credit for either Dra 160 or 260, and at the least they are doing it just for fun. An actor's decision to drop out will have relatively minor ramifications for the actor, but for you it could be catastrophic! Plus in the past, various actors working for extra-credit felt that it wasn't fair that some actors with exceedingly minor parts got the same point reward as they did for a whole lot more work. With all the plays conforming more or less to a ten-minute time limit, this category of grumbling will be greatly reduced.

Audience Friendly Performances. Would you rather attend a performance of six 10-15 minute plays, or six plays each around a hour? Despite the "best laid plans," we have in the past been faced with some marathon performance evenings, and the reality of these marathon events is that by the end of the evening we have lost a considerable portion of our audience. The shorter scripts will allow keep our faithful public wanting more, not less.

More time for analysis. Shorter scripts make it far easier to do a beat and parts of plot analysis. With longer scripts, there wasn't enough time to do a beat analysis, whereas now doing a beat analysis has become a formal assignment, thereby creating a more noticable link of purpose between the work of Dra 362 (Script Analysis) and Dra 361.

Easier Techs. Shorter plays can still be very complex technically, but generally shorter plays tend to have less cues than longer works, which allows more technical time to get what you really want.

In short, the ten-minute play puts an emphasis on quality versus quantity, and increases the probability that you'll end up taking pride (rather than leaving town) in your final work. Would you ask someone taking their driver's license test to drive between Boston and San Francisco? Probably not; yes it could be done, and yes it could be an exhilerating educational experience for some. But for most, the odds are that they would be on the highway to failure rather than success. Likewise, I want your culminating Dra 361 project to be as positive for you as possible.
[ PLAY LISTINGS ]
Collections of Ten-Minute Plays

All of the these plays are on reserve in Holland Library.
Those marked with an * are available for purchase at the Bookie.

CLICK ON THE HYPERTEXT TITLES TO SEE SPECIFIC PLAY LISTINGS.

TEN-MINUTE PLAYS FROM ACTOR'S THEATRE OF LOUISVILLE

Jon Jory, ed.
New York: Samuel French, Inc. 1989.
ISBN: 0-573 62558 1

The current popularity of the ten-minute play form is largely due to the efforts of Jon Jory, Producing Director of Actor's Theatre of Louiville. As part of the now internationally famous Humana Festival, where new plays of all lengths are premiered, Jory has created a specific part of the festival to the ten minute play. In this first volume, there are 25 Plays. In a forward to this collection, Jon Jory comments on the ten-minute play form.