HOLD THE STAGE

BY AUDREY NELSON

The theater was dark, the audience was rapt and Alex Sanso’s glasses were on the floor. It was the end of a 10-minute play, “Routinely,” written by Erica Salazar and staged in August 2023 as part of Island Theatre’s annual Ten-Minute Play Festival. According to the script, Sanso—playing a complicated mother figure—was supposed to collect the pills that had scattered across the stage. There was one problem: Seconds earlier, Sanso’s fellow actor Gianna Soltero-Argo had accidentally knocked Sanso’s glasses off her face.

Soltero-Argo, a rising senior at North Kitsap High School at the time of the production, admitted later that she’d lost herself in the intense emotion of the play, which addressed mental health in the Latino community.

“You get really into the character!” Soltero-Argo said with a laugh.

Sanso, glasses-less, knew the show had to go on.

“I just kind of got on my knees and started collecting the meds like I was supposed to do,” Sanso recalled. “And thinking to myself, ‘I sure hope my glasses didn’t break.’”

The glasses survived. Sanso scooped them up and hurried offstage. With not a second to waste—it was time for the next play.

So it goes in any good 10-minute play festival. The chaos of one play is forgotten as it rolls into the next, with hardly a moment for the audience to catch its breath. The whole time, the moving parts involved in producing any work of theater are all but invisible.

Don’t be fooled, though. There are plenty of moving parts.

Just ask Steve Stolee. Stolee is the managing director of Island

Theatre, a 30-year-old Bainbridge institution billed as “The Best Damn Theatre Company in the World.” He’s been involved with the Ten-Minute Play Festival since its 2011 inception, which means he’s familiar with the year-round process required to stage the festival.

Each fall, Island Theatre publishes a call for submissions. Playwrights then have until February to submit original plays, which are reviewed by a panel of judges. Directors hold auditions in May, and a summer of rehearsals leads up to an August show.

It might surprise some to know that compared to a full-length play, the festival is a relatively small commitment for writers, actors and directors.

“I can always make room for a 10-minute play, if I can get in one,” Sanso said. “It helps feed that little yearning I have for performance, and that community feeling of going through the process.”

That “community feeling” is not an accident. What sets the Ten-Minute Play

Festival apart from other showcases is that participants are required to be connected to Kitsap County in some way.

“We’re trying to knit together the cities that fall within the perimeters of the county,” Stolee said.

In addition to engaging the community, the festival is a way for theater newbies to learn the basics and grow their talents. Island Theatre hosts an annual playwriting workshop associated with the festival, and the showcase itself often features new directors, actors and writers.

Island resident Chelsea Leah participated in the festival for the first time last summer. Her play, “Laundry Day,” was the first she’d ever written.

“Watching my play come to life—that was remarkable, really,” Leah said. “You have these ideas in your head, and you have the black and white paper in front of you. And, all of a sudden, it’s turned into three-dimensional people with facial expressions and colors and sounds right there on the stage.”

The festival attracts its share of theater veterans, too. Pete Benson, who once led the New Plays Festival at California Institute of the Arts, has directed four plays for the Ten-Minute Play Festival. The festival’s commitment to simplicity and accessibility keeps him coming back for more.

“I do think it’s one of the most challenging and fun experiences on the island,” he said.

On August 7, the 2024 festivities will kick off with a Meet the Playwrights event at the Bainbridge Public Library. The 11th annual Ten-Minute Play Festival, with a theme of Hunger, will take place August 22 to 24 at the newly renovated Buxton Center for Bainbridge Performing Arts.

It’s worth a watch. After all, even if one of the plays isn’t your cup of tea, there will be another in 10 minutes.