We know that the best way to learn is by doing. Trial and error. We learned a lot in our first year and made many, many improvements which made our second year SO much easier and more productive. We thank everyone who stopped us to let us know what a great job we were doing and that our improvements were noticed and appreciated.
We also tried some new things in our second year and we'll take the lessons learned from those attempts into our future endeavors. But what fun would it have been -- and how could we have learned -- if we hadn't tried?
All in all, we presented 24 short plays -- most of them pretty darned good -- on a shoestring budget with a host of talent. Eight shows a night for $10 -15. Even with a few clunkers, we know you got your money's worth.
We look forward to our next adventure, with all the improvements and missteps to come!
In the meantime, check out what some of our participants are up to next:
- Playwright David Wiener's Feeding Time at the Human House will be published in the next Smith & Kraus Best 10-Minute Plays of the year series, after winning Best Play accolades in the New York 10-Minute Play Festival and Best of Fest honors right here in our festival. This Best of Fest winner will see another showing at the University Heights Arts Open on September 20 with actors Jonathan Sturch and Dawn Williams reprising their roles on the Swedenborg Hall stage.
- Playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger's His Last Fight will also be published in the next Smith & Kraus Best 10-Minute Plays of the year series, based on the recommendation of the New Perspective Festival. Director Brendon Slater and actors Sara Moneymaker, Terence J. Burke, and Reed Willard will be credited.
- If you didn't know, Playwright Paola Hornbuckle's The Perfect Red was published in the 2008: The Best Ten-Minute Plays 3 0r More Actors. Though another theatre company got the production credit for an earlier mounting of the show (under the name Adam's Apple), the production which qualified it for publication was, you guessed it, the June 2008 production in the New Perspective Festival.
- Playwright Kevin Six's The Cake Women was published in the same series, 2007. We had nothing to do with that, but we've produced a lot of Kevin's work and we wanted to throw him some props. We won't be surprised to see more of his work in print.
