“A good ten minute play captures a peak moment,” said Margaret Thomas Kelso, HSU Assistant Professor of Theatre who heads the dramatic writing program, and coordinates the annual Festival of Ten Minute Plays. “It’s highly intensified and very focused. It’s usually the moment of change in a story-- the climax.”

In presentation as well as the process of bringing these new works to the stage, the play’s the thing. “We don’t have elaborate sets or costumes. Everyone involved understands that the directors and actors serve the script. The script is primary,” Kelso said. “This is the heart of the process, and why it is so important. These are the essential skills that are needed to keep theatre alive. We need theatre that is still growing and reflecting our lives.”

For student playwrights, The Festival of Ten Minute Plays is the culmination of a process that began in the fall. For directors and actors, it’s a production they’ve worked towards all semester. Now it’s time for the final contributors to take their seats: the audience.

The process usually begins with two courses in the fall: the play development workshop for upper class undergraduates and graduate students, and the introductory dramatic writing class. “During that time, students write and rewrite their scripts many times,” Margaret Kelso explained. “Around Thanksgiving, a team of three faculty members, including me, read and select plays for the Festival. Then we solicit directors who read the scripts and make their choices, and we match playwrights and directors.”

“On the second day of spring semester, we have auditions for actors, and together with the playwrights and directors, we cast the plays. The playwrights continue to work on their scripts, and around the middle of the semester the directors start having rehearsals with the actors.” The development process for the playwrights continues, with the actors as active participants. As much as possible, Kelso stated, the process adheres to professional standards of play development. “A lot of universities don’t teach these skills,” she pointed out. “When our students go out into the world, they take these skills and this experience with them.”

But the process is not complete until the play meets an audience. Besides becoming participants in the development of these plays, audiences at the Festival in Gist Theatre will be the first to experience the fresh new work of today’s new voices, in the quick, surprising, compressed form of ten minute plays.