KCACTF Ten-Minute Playwriting Festival

Deadline for Submissions: Monday, October 27, 2008. Playwrights must be students at a college or university in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, or Missouri. If selected, playwrights must be able to attend all dates of the regional festival: KCACTF 41, January 18-24, 2009 at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. Playwrights must attend audition, rehearsal, performance, and response of their scripts. Note: Responses will be given on Saturday, January 24 between 8AM-12PM, so please make sure you’re available for the response as well.

Playwrights must submit FOUR neatly bound copies of their script to the Regional Playwriting Chair. Scripts must be submitted in hard copy and online. Online copies should be MS Word or RTF (Rich Text Format) and emailed to: crespyd@missouri.edu. Make sure that you include: "KCACTF REGION V TEN-MINUTE PLAY" in your subject line of your electronic submission. No playwright may submit more than two different scripts. Both hard and online copies must be received by Monday, October 27, 2008.

Each script submitted must be accompanied by a detachable title page with the writer's name, snail-mail address, e-mail address and phone number clearly printed. The script itself should include a blind title page (with the title of the play only) and also a page specifying the setting and the characters’ ages, genders and descriptions. Please allow a week to ten days if sending your entries via First-Class US Mail. Entries must be received by Monday, October 27, 2008. Scripts received later than this date, or not correctly blinded will not be read.

Plays will be selected by readers FROM ANOTHER REGION. The Region V readers will, in turn, select the other regions’ plays. During the regional festival, student playwrights will work with a student director and student actors to develop a staged reading of the play, followed by a response session with guest respondents.

Four winning Ten-Minute Plays from the entire country will be invited to the national KCACTF at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, April, 2009. At that time, each of the nationally selected plays will again be presented as staged readings in the Kennedy Center Studio Theatre with a cast made up of the national Irene Ryan acting scholarship finalists. In addition, playwrights will spend the week at the Kennedy Center taking workshops with working professionals. (The invitation to the national KCACTF festival will come from a national playwriting committee, and their invitation will come solely from their reading the play, not from the staged reading itself.)

All colleges and universities with at least one Participating or Associate Entry in KCACTF 41 (January-December 2008) may enter the Ten-Minute Play Festival at no additional charge. Regional submissions from schools with no entries in Festival 41 will pay a $20 entry fee per submission. Checks payable to: KCACTF-5 NPP. Mail all submissions to:

Dr. David A. Crespy

KCACTF Playwriting Chair, Region V

Department of Theatre

University of Missouri-Columbia

129 Fine Arts Building

Columbia, MO 65203

Questions? Contact David Crespy at crespyd@missouri.edu.

Guidelines for the Ten-Minute Play

As theatre becomes more expensive to produce and funding becomes more restrictive in all theatre venues, the Ten-Minute Play will become a viable form of production. To help you in your journey through this new form, consider the following:

1. A Ten-Minute Play is a play, not a scene or a skit. Structurally, it should have a beginning, middle and end--just like any good one-act or full-length play. Reach beyond the surface. Enrich the text with subtext.

2. 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.

3. Ten minutes means 7 or 8 pages, certainly no more than 9 or 10. Use standard playwriting format, 12 pt Times New Roman font.

4. While not wanting to hamper 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 productions values, etc., could conceivably eliminate your play from consideration.

5. A monologue is not a Ten-Minute Play. A Ten-Minute Play requires at least two actors in conflict.

6. 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.

7. For some great examples of student plays that have succeeded in KCACTF, look at a copy of The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Presents: Award-Winning Plays from the Michael Kanin National Playwriting Program, Gary Garrison, ed. New York: Back Stage Books, 2006. ISBN: 082308390X. Find it at your library, or purchase a copy online.

8. For more information on the Ten-Minute Play Award, visit the KCACTF national website and follow this string: www.kcactf.org; Students; Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards; Ten-Minute Play Award.