Ten-Minute Play Festival
Student playwrights are invited to submit Ten-Minute plays (10 pages or less, 12pt. font), with no restriction on subject matter, style, or intended audience. Please see the “10-Minute Cover Sheet” on how to submit your play.
Once received by Region V, the plays will be “blinded” so no student name or university appears on the play and then sent to a panel of readers from outside our region.
The panel will select six scripts from those submitted.  These scripts will be presented in a public, concert reading of the plays at the KCACTF Region V Festival 42 in Overland Park, Kansas hosted by Johnson County Community College January 17-23, 2010.


The playwrights whose scripts have been selected for the Region V festival will be invited to the festival and must be able to attend all dates of the regional festival. They will be assigned a director, stage manager, and group of actors. These creative teams will work on the scripts throughout the festival.  Playwrights must attend audition, rehearsal, performance, and response of their scripts.  Following the readings, two of the six plays will be selected as National Semi-finalists to be considered for an invitation to the national festival in Washington, D.C. in the spring.
[Note: While all six plays will be invited to the workshop and will receive a concert reading, the two that will be selected for consideration at the national level will not be judged by the concert reading but by a reading of the plays, which will be done by our festival respondents prior to the festival.]
Students may submit 1-2 plays in this category. Each script that is submitted must be accompanied by a cover sheet. Please, read the cover sheet carefully; it contains important submission instructions.


Scripts are to be submitted to Richard Herman at rherman@ucmo.edu. Every effort will be made to handle submissions with care. However, neither KCACTF nor Region V will be responsible for misdirected or lost submissions. Within one week after you submit your script, you should receive an email confirmation stating that we have received it. If you do not receive confirmation, please contact Richard Herman.
DEADLINE: All scripts must be received by October 26, 2009.
To be considered for the reading awards, the 10-Minute play entries must be from students attending schools that have entered either an Associate or Participating entry for the current year's Regional Festival, productions playing between January 1 and December 1, 2009.
Guidelines for writing a 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 be presented in an evening of Ten-Minute Plays as a concert reading with scripts in hand.
  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.

For additional information contact:
Richard Herman
KCACTF NPP Chair, Region V
rherman@ucmo.edu