Writing the 10-Minute Play by Glenn Alterman

Author:Glenn Alterman [Alterman, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER011030 PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Playwriting
ISBN: 9780879108793
Publisher: Limelight
Published: 2013-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Rich Orloff

Rich Orloff is a prolific author of short plays (mostly comedies), which have had over 800 productions on six continents (and a staged reading in Antarctica). The plays have been published in The Art of the One-Act, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, three editions of the annual Best Ten-Minute Plays series, and five editions of the annual Best American Short Plays. Playscripts has published 60 of his short plays in eight volumes. He’s also written a dozen award-winning, full-length comedies. For more information, see www.richorloff.com.

Glenn Alterman: What was it like for you writing your first ten-minute play? Was it your plan to write a ten-minute play, or did it just work out that way?

Rich Orloff: I wrote my first pair of short plays in the early 1980s, shortly after I joined a playwriting workshop in Los Angeles run by the wonderfully nurturing playwright Oliver Hailey. This was when the ten-minute play form was just beginning to get attention, and the workshop had just gotten acclaim for 24 Hours, a production of 24 short plays (in two parts), each one set during a different hour of the day.

I was a novice playwright then, eager to write plays but overwhelmed by the challenge. As I watched that production, I remembered conversations between my mom and my grandmother, which developed into a quiet, slice-of-life comedy called Gram Folds the Laundry. Meanwhile, Oliver was planning a new production of plays, each set during a different month of the year. I wasn’t sure if Oliver would like my play, but I didn’t know what else to write. A friend jokingly suggested I write a play with lots of attractive women in it. From that remark, I got the idea for Four Extremely Attractive Women Sitting Around Fantasizing About Rich Orloff.

Ever since then, I’ve loved the form and its possibilities, either for capturing a moment in time, as in Gram, or getting a crazy notion and running with it, as in Four Women.

Alterman: Did you come up against any obstacles in writing your first ten-minute play? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?

Orloff: As with writing plays of any length, both plays went through several drafts of shaping and toning. I moved moments around, so that the action in the plays would continue to build. I cut moments I liked but which proved to be extraneous. Ten-minute plays don’t allow for any fat.

Alterman: Do you find working on ten-minute plays any different from working on one-acts or full-lengths? If so, how?

Orloff: The biggest difference is that I get to type “THE END” months earlier than I do for a full-length. Writing a play of any length takes commitment, and I’m never sure how long that commitment will take. It can feel great creating a draft of a short play relatively quickly and having something to look at.

Alterman: What do you feel constitutes a good ten-minute play?

Orloff: The best short plays usually start with a situation the audience can grasp quickly (even

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