Raven Short Play Festival features 15 plays, each 10 minutes long

Previous fall, when the leaders of the Raven Gamers theater business invited playwrights throughout the state to submit original, unpublished scripts for the theater’s very first shorter participate in competition, they rather underestimated the reaction.

“We had been hoping to get 50 to a hundred submissions,” explained Steven Martin, the company’s inventive director. “We got properly above 800, and that was wonderful, but then we had to read them all.”

It took more than two dozen volunteer participate in visitors and multiple rounds of voting to pare down the mountain of scripts to the fifteen plays that will be presented this thirty day period at the Raven Performing Arts Theater during the competition, titled and themed “Love Bites,” in honor of St. Valentine’s Working day and since every display is bite-sized, running 10-12 minutes.

“I anticipated more vampire plays with that concept, but we did get one,” Martin explained. “It’s about a vampire who has an problem with his teeth and has to see a dentist.”

The profitable plays have been divided into teams — eight in one and seven in the other — with every team getting two performances during the four-working day competition. Five administrators, every managing a few shows, and fifteen actors in multiple roles, all from the North Bay, will place on the plays.

“Each evening, you’re likely to be in the theater for an hour and 45 minutes, with an intermission. You’re seeing 10-minute plays, so if you really don’t like one, you will see another one in 10 minutes,” Martin explained. “There’s a superior wide range and it is a challenge for the actors.”

The plays selection in tone from comedian to tragic and scope from intimate and observational to broader and more philosophical.

“These shows operate the gamut. We didn’t want to have fifteen plays that had been all large or fifteen balls of fluff,” Martin explained, citing some certain examples of the program’s wide range:

“When Killer Animals Go Nuts” — “It’s about a man who in serious existence talks like a voiceover in a motion picture trailer and goes out on a day.”

“Last and Always” — “This is about a homosexual few during nine/11. Just one is in one of the twin towers, speaking on the phone to his spouse.”

“The Satisfied Place” — “A girl wants to scatter her late husband’s ashes at Disneyland since that was his delighted area.”

“The Maltese Walter” — “It’s a takeoff on movie noir.”

“All’s Reasonable in Adore and Science” ­— “Two fellas at a science fair look at their girls compete.”

The new occasion was conceived by Laurie Windham of Healdsburg, a playwright and creator who served as chairwoman of the competition and built the final decision of plays, with Martin and Raven literary supervisor Tony Schiullo, following the discipline had been reduce down to 50.

“I was reading an post in the New York Moments about a shorter participate in competition off-Broadway, and it sounded neat,” she explained. “There are so quite a few entertaining new suggestions about playwriting.”

Previous fall, the Pegasus Theater Firm, which has executed at a variety of venues around the Russian River spot due to the fact 1998, presented its 13th yearly Tapas New Brief Play Pageant, drawing 75 participate in submissions from the larger Bay Location.

Getting a diverse direction, the Raven Gamers made a decision to access out nationally, even internationally, on playwright sites, Windham explained.

“I assumed it would be superior for our neighborhood to working experience contemporary suggestions and views from around the entire world,” she explained. “I assumed some insights from big metropolitan areas could benefit Healdsburg.”

Only a few of submissions arrived in from outside the state, and those people weren’t picked out, but profitable playwrights — every awarded $a hundred — occur from throughout the United States, from New York to Florida to Illinois to Texas.

Martin of the Raven Gamers welcomed Windham’s task and has superior hopes for the festival’s long run.

“We’ve been targeted on accomplishing at minimum one new participate in every time,” he explained. “Laurie arrived to us since she understood we had been intrigued in new operates. I hope the new competition does properly, since I’d like to make it an yearly occasion.”

You can access workers writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or [email protected]. On Twitter @danarts.