Join us May 1-3 for the 2026 Ten-Minute Play Festival
This year’s festival drew the attention of playwrights from across the world, with a total of 343 ten-minute original play submissions from ten countries. Each playwright was to follow specific criteria, including incorporating this year’s theme and action within, “The Waiting Room,” using a minimal designated set. The plays that met the criteria were sent on to independent judges (not affiliated with Grosse Pointe Theatre) and ranked based on creative and effective dialogue, plot and character development, technical feasibility, and emotional relatability.
Please join us for this creative, educational, and entertaining performance!
Tickets on Sale Starting March 3, 2026
Rated: PG-13
Performances: Friday, May 1, 7 p.m. , Saturday, May 2, 7 p.m. , Sunday, May 3, 2 p.m.
Doors open thirty minutes before performances.
Tickets: $15 General Seating
Performance Length: 2hrs 15minutes with intermission
Location: St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
20475 Sunningdale Park, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI 48236
Parking available behind the building.
Here are the judges’ top ten picks for this year:
| PLAY |
PLAYWRIGHT |
DIRECTOR |
DESCRIPTION |
|
The Good Old Days |
Roy van Hooydonk |
Arlene Schoenherr |
An elderly couple is attacked in broad daylight, but they unexpectedly turn the tables on their assailant in a spectacular fashion. |
|
The Waiting Room (10)
|
Jon Freda New York, NY |
Rick Hawley |
Two battle-scared veterans realize the fight that matters most is understanding each other. |
|
From a Distance |
Eric Suben Mamaroneck, NY |
Elizabeth Schaefer |
Parents fretfully await the completion of their young son's evaluation for an autism spectrum disorder.
|
|
Destination Trouble |
Beth Polsky |
Stella Woitulewicz & Dominic Aldini |
A millennial and a baby boomer battle it out, waiting for separate job interviews. Life experiences and the anticipation of them help make life-changing decisions.
|
|
Waiting for Waiting for Godot |
Dan Woitulewicz Macomb, MI |
Kelley Donnelly |
Two actors arrive way too early and must wait in the green room for their chance to audition for Waiting for Godot.
|
|
Emergency Contact |
Pamela Morgan Normal, IL |
Dan Woitulewicz |
Candace and Jeremy are forced to confront their failed marriage and find a way to support their child. |
|
The Yellow Submarine |
Patricia Ellis Grosse Pointe, MI |
Arlene Pollock |
What starts out as a very unlikely relationship between two people evolves into the realization that each of these individuals, in their own way, is fighting for their life. What results is an appreciation for life and hope in a brighter tomorrow. . |
|
The Relax and Restore Treatment |
Annelyse Beaman Miller Troy, MI |
Emmajean Evans |
Two women meet in a spa waiting area. The older woman sees her past in the younger woman; the younger woman just can’t seem to relax because of her husband’s willful incompetence. |
|
Pantalaimon |
Erica Hobbs Detroit, MI |
Sharron Nelson Corbin |
Two women each have a small dog. One encourages patience and love for the energetic puppy while she anticipates ending the suffering for her older dog.
|
|
Hope Springs a Turtle |
Bill Brohaugh & Lisa Holt Florence, KY |
Janie Burkey |
An unconventional caregiver spins a peculiar yarn to draw out a troubled young patient.
|
What is a Short Play?
- The short play is five to seven pages, maximum. It serves us well because the shortness enables you to keep the whole play in mind as you write and allows you to examine your technique each time you write a line. Many times, the craft of playwriting gets lost in the momentum, problems and length of a full-length play. Remember that once you’ve mastered the short-play technique, you can easily expand your ideas and characters into a longer piece…either one-act or full length.
- The short play must have a beginning, a middle, and an end – and all the other pieces: a protagonist, an antagonist, a dramatic question, a climax.
Keep your play ‘realistic’ or ‘naturalistic.’ Because it is a form that you know well, you can master the basic craft in your attempt to explore style. A ‘realistic’ play is about contemporary people who you might know and who are executing their contemporary activities. Realism also involves contemporary, ordinary speech. Avoid dialects. Of course, realism does not mean boring or even serious. - Limit your play to two or three characters. Each character must have a complete character arc. Therefore, you may not have utilitarian characters. I encourage you to work with two characters.
- Keep all of your characters on stage as long as possible. Entrances and exits create activity, but many times deflate the dramatic action. You do not need blizzards or other phenomena to keep characters on stage. If characters have dynamic goals, they will stay on stage to pursue those goals. If you have written a character that keeps leaving, let him/her leave the play entirely because the goal is not strong enough for dramatic impact.
- Keep the setting in one locale. There are to be no breaks, no scene shifts, no blackouts and no time lapses. A short play cannot support the loss of momentum that each stage machination requires. For our purposes, you are to stay in one locale for a real-time conversation or dialog.
Create an early point of attack. The short form has no patience for introduction and exposition. Let this information find its way into the rising action. - Avoid speeches. If your characters’ needs are strong enough, they will not allow each other to talk too much. Make sure your crisis and your climax are ‘onstage events’ rather than ‘now I realize’ speeches.
- Keep the action onstage. Don’t talk about something that happened elsewhere or at another time; make all the action happen on your stage in your play.
- Get rid of greetings. When a new person enters a scene, drop the hello’s and the how-are-you’s. Although we say it all the time in real life, it’s just plain boring on stage. There are other ways to reveal relationships.
- Stage directions. In most cases, the fewer directions you have, the more concentrated and focused the actual action of the play will be.
- Things to include in stage directions:
- Basic description of the setting.
- Entrances and exits.
- Physical action that must be performed or the dialog makes no sense.
- Pertinent pauses in the dialog not filled by previously described actions.
- Things NOT to include in stage directions:
- Tone of voice or delivery hints for lines.
- Costume descriptions of what characters are wearing, unless pertinent to the action.
- Background on the sets or characters, other than the most basic information.
- Characters’ thoughts or intentions.
- Never delve into the interior lives of the characters or why objects are on stage.
- Don’t worry about upstage, stage right, etc. Make all references in relation to objects you’ve placed in their world. (EX: BETH moves behind the sofa or FRED enters from the bedroom.)
- Things to include in stage directions: