Lee Street Theatre will host its fifth annual 10-minute play festival, featuring six original works, next week.
“There are a lot of great plays this year,” Managing Artistic Director Justin Dionne said. “We’re really happy with the selection, they are all very good.”
All 27 submissions were judged blindly by a committee, which changes each year.
“I pull out the top 10 scores based on our rubric, then I pick the six that I think will make the best evening of plays,” Dionne said.
After the six plays were selected, the playwrights spent a Saturday in February with Denise Laughlin Stewart, writer of the award-winning one-woman show “Dirty Barbie and Other Girlhood Tales.”
“She gave playwrights great ideas to sharpen their plays and grow them in different ways,” Dionne said. “This was our first playwright development, which was something we’re focused on as an organization.”
The theme for this year’s festival is “Hotel 6.”
“It’s really interesting the way the playwright can come up with ways to integrate the theme,” Dionne said. “Some of our favorite ones are the ones where they do something you don’t expect and surprise you with a really creative, random idea.”
One of those plays is Andy Rassler’s “Dante Six.”
“It’s two receptionists at the sixth level of Dante’s inferno,” Dionne said. “They’re checking you into the sixth level of hell. “
The theatre’s programming committee has already chosen “Office Hours” as the theme for next year’s show.
Submissions are already being accepted and must be completed by Dec. 1.
Plays must have no more than three characters and require a minimal set. All plays should be comedies.
Dionne said Lee Street will drop the “6” from its theme next year.
“Now that we’re growing, we may have more than six plays in the future,” he said.
Dionne said the 10-minute format are a good break from a typical play.
“In a lot of plays it’s about the full story from top to bottom and how the characters change through time,” he said. “But the 10-minute plays are specifically more about characters in fun situations.
“The characters are what really sell plays.”

Contact reporter Sarah Campbell at 704-797-7683.
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