One of my new 10-minute plays, Paper Lanterns, is getting a production in late August! I submitted it to this festival at the Old Courthouse Theatre near Charlotte, NC. It's one of 6 plays getting produced. I'm excited to connect with another theatre and always super thrilled to see something that's been living in my head embodied on stage!
The cool thing is it's a play that came from the writing prompts on this blog.
I just want to take this opportunity to remind us of a couple of things:
1) I am learning that having a bunch of short pieces is a smart thing. Until recently, I have only written one 10-15 minute play. I've been focusing almost entirely on full-length plays. But because of the writing prompts I've been posting on my blog, I have generated a new 10-minute play each month.
I think the time-frame I set for myself to do the prompts (2-4 hours in a weekend) lends itself to short plays. Initially, I did the prompts because I wanted short creative breaks from revision. But hey, I ended up with a handful of viable 10-minute plays (some more than others). After doing the weekend writing prompt, I spent the next week or two revising if I was taken with the idea. If not, that was okay, too.
2) You've gotta submit stuff. I read an article recently that said you should aim for 100 rejections in a year. That seems far more than what I could manage. But the point is well taken. You've got to get your work out there, and you should take rejections as a badge of honor. They are the only way to ever have your work accepted.