An evening of great 10-minute plays can be a joy ride for audiences of all experience levels, from adventurous theater aficionados to newbies with short attention spans.
The form allows writers to take certain risks, with the hope that if one piece doesn’t connect, the audience isn’t trapped in dread, for another piece starts in about nine minutes.
But writing an effective 10-minute play is a nearly impossible task. The author must quickly accomplish everything the writer of a full-length play has two hours to achieve: establish characters and one central piece of business, move the action forward, come to climactic revelation – and get out.
Too often, playwrights experiment without discipline or focus, or they mistake 10-minute plays for 10-minute scenes. There’s a big difference. So watching an evening of short plays requires an open mind and a forgiving nature.
Write Angle Productions’ “Colorado Quickies” is a great, 11-year annual tradition. Born from the ashes of the late Changing Scene’s “Summerplay,” it offers 10 short stories written by Write Angle members. To date the Quickies have staged 110 plays by 28 authors. While impressive, that ratio reveals the fairly insular nature of the event. This year, three writers contribute two pieces each.
But the 2006 staging wisely welcomes two budding writers from Curious Theatre’s “New Voices Project,” though you’d never know their pieces were penned by kids. High school senior Annie Woodward’s “Okay” was the night’s most satisfying piece, a simple conversation between a shy Red Cross “Donut Dolly” and a morose U.S. soldier stationed in Korea in 1951. Her goal is clear, her dialogue articulate, the audience emotionally affected.
High school junior Michael Thompson provided the most ambitious and, frankly, most intimidating piece. His “The Butcher’s Children” is about (I think) a Bosnian war assassin who is visited by the ghost of a soldier he has “butchered.”
“Colorado Quickies” is the kind of creative endeavor you’d give anything to say is better than it actually is. There is an impressive range in style, from farce to realism to existentialism. The cast of six includes established names such as Trina Magness, Theresa Reid, Lisa Mumpton and David Blumenstock. Brian Mallgrave’s simple, clever set features 10 hangings of partial words, one from each piece. Christy Montour-Larson is a big-name director but her work with both the actors and material is a mixed bag.
The biggest problem is the melancholy tone. Most of the pieces are in some way about a breakdown in human connection. The best of that lot is Carol Roper’s “Forever Yours,” in which a woman regrets the safe choices she has made in love.
This slate offers just one knee-slapping comedy to balance things, but the attempts at laughter aren’t that funny. That the cast must flit happily onstage between pieces only drives home the dearth of whimsy.
A notable exception is Ken Crost’s sweet “Mim and Max,” a dance with words about two new lovers who overcome fear and a language barrier.
The pieces that take on more substantive intellectual challenges are either too esoteric or lack cogency. Mark Ogle’s “Forever Yours” takes on randomness versus predetermination, but seven scenes within one 10-
minute play leaves heads spinning. And while most of the evening is thoroughly original, the finale sends up modern art in a predictable way – a couple mistakes a bag of groceries left in a gallery for an art exhibit.
Despite these reservations, “Quickies” is a noble tradition that deserves encouragement. See it for yourself. Like that bag of groceries, art is in the eye of the beholder.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
** 1/2 | “Colorado Quickies”
10-MINUTE PLAYS|Write Angle Productions|Written by Annie Woodward, Michael Thompson, Katharyn Grant, Carol Roper, Ken Crost, Mark Ogle and Tyler Smith| Directed by Christy Montour- Larson|John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place (Lowry)|THROUGH MARCH 18|7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays|2 hours, 15 minutes| $15-$17 (2-for-1 Thursdays)| 303-562-3232
