STOP ASKING FOR UNPRODUCED TEN-MINUTE PLAYS! | Donna Hoke

4 min readSep 13, 2021

Six years ago, I wrote a blog post called YOU WANT OUR UNPRODUCED TEN-MINUTE PLAYS WHY? It’s worthwhile background reading, but if you don’t feel like clicking on the link to read, here’s the TL; DR: theaters didn’t have great reasons for wanting world premieres of ten-minute plays. In the end, the answers to why this was a requirement ended up sounding a lot like “just because.”

For a while, I really advocated for writing to these companies and we did see some success in getting a couple to amend their requirements, as documented in the aforementioned blog post. But as I wrote fewer and fewer ten-minute plays, I became less fervent about trying to effect change in this arena. The writing campaign was always akin to bringing a hammer to a gunfight so, not surprisingly, theaters jumping on the unproduced bandwagon proliferated. I still thinking writing ten-minute plays is hugely important, but the arena for them has become increasingly exploitative, particularly around wanting brand new works, often written specifically for an event, and all too frequently for little to no compensation or, worse, a “contest.” Many unabashedly charge fees for the privilege of submitting. For a ten-minute. Come on.

Into this mix is a new reason for needing unproduced work that is failing a reasonable test of logic: theaters say they want to give opportunities to as many playwrights as possible. I don’t get it.

1) Theaters aren’t in the habit of developing ten-minute plays, so that means they’re totally willing to give their audiences raw material and charge for it. This would never happen with full-length plays; when full-length opportunities ask for unproduced work, it’s because they intend to do a reading that will help develop it. When you submit a ten-minute play, you are submitting it for production, and when you submit for production, your play should be competitive enough to go up against everything, even previously produced plays. Instead, once again, it seems theaters or pop-up festivals are just asking for what everybody else is asking for with no basic understanding as to why, or even the industry, frankly. (To this end, if theaters are being less than transparent and actually taking grant money under the guise of new play development, double shame on them.)

2) Asking for unproduced work does not give opportunity to more playwrights. The same playwrights are writing produced plays and unproduced plays; the theater is not increasing the pool of playwrights by saying the work has to be unproduced. Instead, it’s saying that playwrights need to increasingly write new plays to satisfy a theaters’ vague desire for new work or to satisfy its ego for asking for work written to some prompt.

3) Including only unproduced work doesn’t suddenly make better playwrights worse. Pursuant to #2, playwrights successful in the ten-minute genre are more likely to write a good ten the first time out and thus be more likely to be selected over a playwright who isn’t as good at crafting a tight ten. Asking for unproduced work does not create an even playing field; it just forces the more produced writers of ten-minute plays to keep cranking out work for no compensation.

Is that the point? If successful writers of ten-minute plays keep running out of material, eventually everybody else will get a chance? What is this, Harrison Bergeron? Keep chasing off playwrights until we’re at the lowest common denominator? Is that how to satisfy an audience? Is that what we want for theater? Ten-minute plays already have a trouble earning respect; this isn’t helping.

As a reader for many ten-minute play festivals-even ones that allow produced work-I can tell you that it’s still hard to find an evening of really good ten-minute plays. “Produced” has become such a non-meaningful measure in the ten-minute world, where supply can barely keep with demand, especially when the demand is for unproduced.

The constant call for new work with minimal to rare compensation, development, or recognition has taken what was a useful form and diminished it for no good reason. If the point of asking for unproduced work is actually to keep the pool smaller, I’d suggest myriad other ways: make the submission window shorter, ask for plays (not NEW ones) on a particular topic, ask for something written in the past two years, ask for plays with no more than three productions… there are so many ways if theaters just use their imagination. Use it instead of presenting faulty logic about creating more opportunity for playwrights.

It just doesn’t make sense.

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