As the deadline for the Janet Zweig street kiosk script competition draws near, there’s another opportunity for local scriptwriters in Racine. The Over Our Head Players are seeking submissions for their 2010 Snowdance Ten Minute Comedy Festival. It’s a festival of comic shorts that runs 10 minutes or less.
The challenge is to come up with something funny that takes no longer than 10 minutes to play out from beginning to end.The suggestion is to write something that can be easily staged with one to five actors. The five actor limit is interesting. One of my best-recieved shorts feautred a cast of ten . . . Five actors in ten minutes . . . each character could average like . . . two minutes of dialogue each. I suppose there's nothing specifically in the rules that precludes doubling, but at that stage, you're drifting away from the "easy to produce" qualifier. With no other real limitations, it's a very open comedy canvas.
The cash award for best in show is $300. With $100 going to second and third place. The competition is only open to unpublished, unproduced scripts, so anything that’s appeared in previous shorts shows will not be permitted. One entry per playwright. Perhaps the coolest thing about submitting to Snowdance is the lack of an entry fee. They only ask that the scripts be mailed to them on paper (no electronic entries) and that two copies be provided of your script.
All entries must be postmarked by November 1st. Entries chosen for production will be announced that month. The Snowdance Festival itself runs from January 29th – February 28th of next year.
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More information on the contest can be found here.
