The time is right for the Ten-Minute Play Festival

After a motherlode of holiday fare on Sarasota stages, the new year brings a welcome palate cleanser in the form of Theatre Odyssey’s Ten-Minute Play Festival. As attention spans grow shorter, the idea of a Ten-Minute Play is looking more “right-sized” all the time.

Each of the eight original productions from Florida playwrights its fully staged with the help of local directors and actors, many of whom are familiar figures from their appearances on stages in Sarasota, Bradenton and Venice.

Theatergoers may recognize Theatre Odyssey as the producer of the One-Act Play Festival, which like its Ten-Minute kin, makes its home in the Jane B. Cook Theatre at FSU Center for the Performing Arts.

According to Theatre Odyssey co-founder Tom Aposporos, the Ten-Minute Play festival had largest number of submissions — 100 — for the 2026 edition in its 21-year history.

Unlike the One-Act Play Festival, which accepts submissions from across the country, the Ten-Minute Play Festival is limited to Florida.

“When we began this festival 21 years ago, we produced six plays. Over the years, the number of submissions has hovered between 40 and 60 plays. But to get 100 is really amazing,” Aposporos says.

Early on, there was some skepticism about the format of a 10-minute play, Aposporos says. That has long fallen by the wayside in an era  when people consume TikToks, YouTube and other online entertainment in short bursts. 

It’s no longer necessary for Aposporos to resort to his longstanding defense of 10-minute plays: “If you don’t like it, you can always leave and it’s going to be over in a few minutes anyway.”

The 10-minute play genre officially got its start back in 1977, at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. However, a dramatist named Pierre Loving published a book of 10-minute plays in the early 1920s.

In the past, many of the plays submitted to Theatre Odyssey’s Sarasota festival came from members of the Sarasota Playwrights Society, but the range is wider this year. Oddly enough, two playwrights are based in Celebration, Florida, Disney’s planned community where the 1998 film “The Truman Show” was made. Only one is from Sarasota, he says.

Forming a theatrical family 

During a telephone interview, Aposporous, the former mayor of Poughkeepsie, New York, who is a real estate broker and the front-of-house manager for Asolo Repertory Theatre, talked about how directing and acting in one-act and 10-minute plays produced by Theatre Odyssey has created a family of sorts among Sarasota’s theatrical community.

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“During my 21 years with the festival, I’ve watched high schoolers grow up and become adults,” he says. Some Theatre Odyssey alumni have gone on to become community leaders. Among them Kelly Kirschner, who was the youngest city commissioner elected in Sarasota before becaming mayor in April 2010.

Now an independent consultant, Kirschner also was the founding director of the nonprofit organization UnidosNow, which is dedicated to Hispanic advancement, and served as vice-president and dean of continuing education at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg.

Theatre Odyssey has also given seasoned actors the opportunity to share their knowledge with their peers as they further hone their craft. Currently holding the crown for most illustrious Theatre Odyssey alum is Sarasota actress Annie Morrison, now playing the lead in the Broadway touring production of “Kimberly Akimbo.”

During its existence, the Ten Minute Play Festival has received financial assistance from the Bradenton visitors bureau, the state of Florida and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, according to Aposporos.

This year’s Ten Minute Play Festival has four five presenting sponsors — an anonymous donor, Paragon Festivals, the George L. Spoll Foundation at Community Foundation of Sarasota County, the Johnson Arts & Education Fund and CAN Community Health.

Eight plays are in competition for the competition’s Vera Safran Prize of $500. They are:

• "A Promising Young Man," by Ken Preuss of Oviedo, about man trapped in a quandary when romantic chickens come home to roost.
• "Breaking News!" by Dolores Salvo of Celebration, about two parents concerned over a young man wearing a hoodie and another wearing a baseball cap. 
• "By Choice" by Gabriel Ortiz of Ellenton, an Actors Equity member familiar to Sarasota audiences. It follows a couple in the wake of an unexpected pregnancy that makes a man feel powerless. 
• "On the Likelihood of Elephants" by Brian Brijbag of Spring Hill, which follows two travelers — a downtrodden professor and a grieving poet — who meet late at night in a train station and form a bond.
• "Ripcord" by Diane Finney of Celebration, in which a reluctant skydiver gets a wake-up when an equipment malfunction occurs. 
• "Sorting Through M&M’s" by Rishi Chowdhary of Orlando, in which two estranged siblings embark on a hiking trip after spending years apart.
• "Til Death Do Us Part" by Sara Lazarus of Sarasota, in which a ghost of a murdered husband returns to locate evidence to convict his widow of the crime. 
• "Ambient Light," by Paul Donnelly of Tallahassee, follows two former paramours who meet by coincidence after a gap of three decades.