"Intriguing! Entertaining!"

10th Annual 10 Minute Play Festival reviewed
here in Northern Lights.

Heads Up

10th Annual 10 Minute Play
Festival is previewed in Eureka
Times-Standard's Northern Lights,
Eureka Reporter, North Coast Journal,
Arcata Eye and online at HSU Now.
Production members are interviewed
on ArtWaves, Tuesday (Apr. 29) at
1:30 0n KHSU.

10th Annual 10 Minute Play Festival (April 2008)

poster design by Johanna Hembry

Drama, comedy, fantasy and ten minutes later, another one! It's the 10th annual Ten Minute Play Festival at HSU, Thursdays through Saturdays, April 24-26 and May 1-3 at 7:30 PM in Gist Hall Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets $5 general $3 students and seniors from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. HSU students free limited seating.

Mason Lev, Jonny Barrett, Mackenzie Cox and
Brian Pike in Beneath the Gas by Alex Costello.

It's 10 for the 10!

It started in a classroom a decade ago, to become one of the most anticipated and popular events on the annual HSU performance schedule. Beginning April 24, the HSU Ten Minute Play festival celebrates its tenth birthday with this year’s slate of imaginative comedies, dramas and fantasies created and performed by HSU students.

Chris Werner, Johanna Hembry, Rebecca House
and Chris Scardina in A Day in the Park by Joseph
Castro.

“I’m really excited about it,” said Margaret Thomas Kelso, HSU professor in the Theatre, Film and Dance department and coordinator of the festival, who began it in 1998. “The whole festival grew out of an end-of-the-class presentation in the advanced playwriting course. It was very informal, with no sets or costumes. But it was successful, and each year we kept adding to it, and it’s grown and grown to the point where it is a major part of the season. It’s an event people look forward to.”

This year’s festival features eight new ten-minute plays running the gamut from intense drama (“Beneath the Gas,” set in a Nazi death camp, and “Daughters,” about the interrogation of a suspected terrorist) to high comedy (“Condition Blue,” in which a criminal coddles a depressed detective) and meaningful fantasy (“Mail Room Madness,” in which a contemporary Dilbert converses with his letter opener, and “To Womb It May Concern,” a dialogue between twins on the pros and cons of being born.)

Steven King in Condition Blue by Alex Gradine.

Kyle Ryan and Kady Pomerleau in To Womb It
May Concern by Jonny Barrett.

After that first presentation of ten minute plays in a classroom in 1998, this event moved from one small black-box theatre space to another. One year it also played in Eureka, at what was then the World Premiere Theatre of Playwrights in Progress. It was only in the last several years that the 10 Minute Play Festival in the Gist Hall Theatre became part of the official Theatre, Film and Dance season, ending the school year.

But it still doesn’t necessarily look like other productions on the schedule. There are costumes, but “we still keep the setting very simple,” Kelso said. “We use just a few black wood blocks because that helps to unify all the plays.”

Alex Gradine and Ozrel Padilla in Kings' Crusade
by Clayton Cook.

The festival is also still an outgrowth of the Play Development Workshop, an advanced playwriting class. “The focus in that class is on the collaborative development of plays,” Kelso said, “and the festival is a natural progression of that. Actors and designers and others in the class all get the play when it is fresh they give the playwright ideas and suggestions and feedback. But that’s where it ends in terms of the class.”

“Now students of that class submit scripts for the Festival. Other students can, too—this year we have scripts from the beginning playwriting class, and one from a fiction writer in the English department who has never written a play before.”

“We get about 35 plays a year now. A committee of faculty chooses somewhere between 7 and 10. Then each of those scripts gets a director, a cast of actors, plus some costume and design support. And the collaborations continue.”

2008 playwrights are (back) Mackenzie
Cox, Alex Gradine, (front) Jonny Barrett,
Alex Costello. Not pictured: Joseph Castro,
Henry Echeverria, Clayton Cook and
Kevin McCaffree.

For the playwrights, the creative process doesn’t stop with the Festival production. “We really look at the audience response—what do they get and enjoy, what aren’t they getting? And playwrights rewrite after that. That’s an important part of the process.”

“While the audience is important in all play productions, it’s particularly important with new plays, because that’s how the playwrights know if what they are trying to communicate is getting across.”

Playwrights as superheroes: Jonny Barrett, Mackenzie
Cox, Alex Costello and Alex Gradine.

Mason Lev, Jonny Barrett, Mackenzie Cox and
Brian Pike in Beneath the Gas.

The Plays

From Beneath the Gas
by Alex Costello

Powerful drama about Nazi death camp prisoners who find an unexpected survivor, and must decide if her life is worth theirs.

Rosenthal- Mason Lev
Max- Gabriel Holman
Doctor Hoffman- Jonny Barrett
Herschal- Brian Pike
Girl- Mackenzie Cox


Mailroom Madness
by Henry Echeverria

Office satire about an interpretive dance major who can’t fit into his cubicle world—until his letter opener starts talking to him.

Steve- Brian Coker
Pete- Ian Santos
TJ- Chisana White
Jill- Kelly Whitaker

The Plays

Condition Blue
by Alex Gradine

A fun comedy about a depressed detective and the criminal who coddles him.

Greg-Steven King
Ann-Rachel Brink
Mr. Badd-Alejandro Servin


Daughters
by Kevin McCaffree

Intense interaction between an FBI agent and a suspected terrorist, addressing the question, who do we really care about?

Michael Barnes, a police officer- Jeff Wilson
Joshua Peterson, a federal agent- Ethan Heinz
Terrorist- Chris Hegler

Johanna Hembry and Chris Scardina
in A Day in the Park