7 plays, 10 minutes each. 7 directors, 2 producers selecting from stacks (or screens) of submitted scripts, stages full of seasoned Upper Valley actors and some new to the experience. It’s the 17th anniversary production of the Parish Players Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival, opening on March 28 at the Eclipse Grange Theater in Thetford, Vermont.
Nora Jacobson, renowned filmmaker who makes her home in the Upper Valley, has stepped away from behind the camera to direct one of the plays, Rockaway Park 2012 by (regional Emmy Award winner) Victoria Z. Daly. It portrays the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and its effect on two middle-aged women who have been friends since high school and live next to each other in Rockaway Park, awaiting long-delayed help from FEMA.
Why “just” 10 minutes? Producer Duncan Nichols explains: “"If you've ever written haikus, it's a discipline like no other poetic form. So with a ten minute play. It is not an anecdote or simple scenario, it strives instead to be a complete play. It has to please in 10 pages." Co-Producer Kate Magill notes: “A ten-minute script allows directors and actors to experiment and take risks. That might mean incorporating new media, working in a new genre, or auditioning for the first time. The Tens brings out a lot of actors who are new to the Upper Valley theater community, and sometimes new to acting altogether.”
A ten-minute length has some practical advantages as well. Jacobson, originally somewhat skeptical, now embraces the form. “ . . . You can get through several run-through rehearsals in two hours, so it is not a full time undertaking, which is helpful when you have multiple projects going simultaneously (as I do). The actors can learn their lines easily so that I can concentrate on blocking and directing quite soon after we start rehearsing.”
Asked how directing live theater differs from her usual work in film, Jacobson noted the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the stage:
For me, as a filmmaker who obsessively strives to make her films as perfect as she can, and who actually has been known to tweak her films after they have been screened publicly, in directing theater, (and this ten minute play in particular), I feel slightly liberated from that obsessive need for perfection. I and my actors will certainly strive to make it as "perfect" as we can, but we also acknowledge that it is community theater, which brings with it a chance to experiment.
Jacobson is, of course, one of many directors in this festival. Faith Catlin, well known in the Upper Valley theatre milieu, has her own theater company in New York and was a TV actor, and Terri Epp, another director, had her own women's Shakespeare company in Philadelphia. The group of plays, described by producers as “side splitting and somber by turns,” include productions that center on themes “from marriage and divorce and chance encounters . . . to a rowdy group of community thespians on opening night.”
Dates and times above. Tickets are available here.
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.