Hanging ‘Ten’

Young Chang

In 10 minutes, you can talk on the phone, eat a salad, feed your fish,

clean your room, wash the dishes, sing aa few songs or drive 10 miles.

Or you can watch an entire play.

“Ten or Less,” an annual series of six student-directed short plays,

each running 10 minutes in length or less, will run for two weekends

through Oct. 29 at Orange Coast College.

Two of the plays are written by students from OCC’s Repertory Theater

Company. The other four were penned by recognized playwrights.

Each production, like any full-length play, will have a premise,

complications and an ending. It’s just a matter of how quickly these

elements are thrown out.

Hugh Goodearl, 23, wrote “Bus Stop #2.” It’s a 10-minute piece about

two strangers who meet at a bus stop. There is no padding to the script,

he said.

“It’s just you have to get to everything quickly,” he said. “You can’t

really explore the characters in depth and you can only introduce them

and then get them out of there.”

Goodearl doesn’t prefer writing shorter pieces over longer ones. But

he recognizes their differences.

The longer the story, the more loose ends there are to tie up. The

shorter the piece, the easier those tasks become. Longer plays allow for

more characters and character development. Shorter works mean introducing

a character just 10 minutes before their exit.

Frank Miyashiro, who writes both long and short plays and is directing

Goodearl’s play, compares his work to a sculpture.

“You can say less with a shorter play, so your sculpture’s not going

to be as big,” he said. “But it can still be powerful.”

In writing, Miyashiro says it’s harder to complete a 10-minute play

than it is a two-hour play because there is less time to make a point.

There is an arc, he says -- the characters, the mood and the turns

make up the curve.

“You gotta do the arc quicker,” he said.

Risko Dokazanof, who is acting and directing the self-written play

“Evening Bench,” prefers writing something short.

“The short pieces connected together make the longer piece,” he said.

Dokazanof, who graduated from the National Academy of Cinema and

Theater in Bulgaria, said his play is more than five but less than 10

minutes long.

Jeff Kemper, who will appear in “Evening Bench” and two other plays,

said shorter productions are more challenging because he is forced to be

more succinct.

“You have to warm [the audience] faster and you have to be really to

the point,” he said.

As a director, Miyashiro understands his actors’ sentiments. But

working with Goodearl has been a valuable experience for him. There is

only so much in the story he can change without disrupting the writer’s

intention, he said, and his job is only to add to the stage play.

“It’s great that I’ve had Hugh here, so I can ask him,” Miyashiro

said. “It’s not like Shakespeare, who’s already dead.”

FYI

WHAT: “Ten or Less”

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Oct.

29

WHERE: Orange Coast College’s Drama Lab Studio, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa

COST: $5 and $6

CALL: (714) 432-5640