Theatre Odyssey celebrates 20 years of its Ten Minute Play Festival

Tom Aposporos remembers some things about Theatre Odyssey’s inaugural Ten Minute Play Festival very well; other not so much. It was held at Art Center Sarasota back in 2006 and on opening night, here weren’t enough chairs for those who held reservations to get in.

He and Larry Hamm looked around and decided they would find chairs wherever they could. “We went into the actors’ dressing rooms and took their chairs so they had to put on their makeup standing up,” Aposporos recalls. “We seated as many people as we could and told everybody else to come back the next night.”

But was it six plays or seven? No matter. The festival has since settled on a format of eight plays.

The success of the fledgling festival was a surprise to some established members of Sarasota’s theater community, Aposporos notes. “The idea of creating 10-minute plays was controversial at the time. Some people who were theater royalty said we would fail miserably, but I could already see that people’s attention spans were shortening,” he says.

Little did Aposporos know how popular the Ten Minute Play Festival would become over the years. It moved to the Jane B. Cook Theatre in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts in 2014 and has become an established part of the Sarasota arts season.

Image courtesy of Cliff Roles

This year’s Ten Minute Play Festival will showcase eight new plays by Florida playwrights from Jan. 9-12 as well as the winner of last season’s Student Ten-Minute Playwriting Festival.

Following the Sunday matinee, a panel of judges will announce the winners for Best Play, which will receive a $500 prize, and the runner-up, which will get $300.

The plays vying for the Vera Safran Prize (Best Play) are:

• “A Very Private Person,” based on a true story of a woman who used a female pseudonym for her novels and a male nom de plume for her plays written by Don Salvo, co-founder of the Playwrights Lab at Pittsburgh Public Theatre
• “Abduction,” about a man who gets kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings in search of genetic material, written by Stephen Walkiewicz, who has been a lighting and projection technician for Blue Man Group, Universal Studios and Cirque Du Soleil
• “Feel Good, Inc.,” a face-off between a modern-day life coach and ancient philosophers like Socrates, written by festival veteran Bernie Yanelli, a history and economics teacher at St. Stephen’s School
• “Love My Dog, Love Me,” the tale of an ostensibly mismatched couple on their first date who realize their pets may bring them together, written by Seva Anthony, a fest alumni who has appeared on stages in Florida, Oregon and Las Vegas
• “Outcast and Rebels,” which follows a woman on the hunt for her missing granddaughter, by Marj O’Neill-Butler, a member of the Dramatists Guild, Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA
• “Something is Rotten on the Stage of Glenmark,” which chronicles an audition for a college production of “Hamlet” that goes disastrously awry, written by Ken Preuss, a longtime teacher who has performed in magic and improv comedy shows
• “Strangers Off a Train,” which explores the idea that it’s the people you meet on a journey, not the destination, that is paramount, by playwright and monologue writer Samara Siskind, and
• “The Intermission,” about a frantic search for a replacement musician during the intermission of a chamber music concert, written by Jan Wallace and Philippe Koenig.

As the festival evolved over the years, people jumped on board the 10-minute play train and some original participants jumped off. Who has been with Aposporos all the way?

According to the man himself, no one. “Nobody else took the whole trip,” according to Aposporos, who has had successful careers in politics and real estate in addition to his theatrical activities.

At a recent party celebrating Theatre Odyssey’s 20th anniversary, Aposporos told the crowd that Rick Kerby, producing artistic director of the Manatee Players in Bradenton, was inadvertently the catalyst for the theatrical group’s formation.

Courtesy image

“Had it not been for Rick Kerby, it’s possible that Theatre Odyssey would not exist,” Aposporos says. Not long after Kerby’s arrival at Manatee Players more than two decades ago, he created a production of “Metamorphosis” based on the stories of Ovid that jumped back and forth between past and present.

“I was part of that award-winning cast, which was together for two years, and so was Larry Hamm. Larry and I started talking about how to help advance new playwrights. Larry really had a vision for how the plays should be selected.”

Other important players over the years include Laurie and Fred Zimmerman, Don and Jenny Aldrich Walker, Bob Trisolini and Dan Higgs, to name just a few, Aposporos says.

As Theatre Odyssey has grown, it has added a student playwriting contest and a One Act Play Festival. Its financing has also become more elaborate.

In the beginning, Aposporos says that he and others believed that if Theatre Odyssey ended the season with $300 in the bank after paying its bills,  the next season’s ticket sales and donations would sustain the Ten Minute Play Festival.

“That made sense for maybe about five years,” he says. “Then we started to grow up.”

Aposporos remembers the time that he told audiences that ticket sales only covered 75% of the festival’s costs, only to later learn that during that season, box office revenues generated 100% of the budget.

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 presenting sponsors — including one anonymous donor, Paragon Festivals (in memory of Denise Kinney), the George L. Spoll Foundation at Community Foundation of Sarasota County and CAN Community Health.