Gone in 60 Seconds: The 2012 SF One-Minute Play Festival Video

I hope you are having a great holiday season!

Here is a gift for you from the San Francisco theater community: the video of the 3rd Annual San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. 72 plays, 40 writers, 40 actors, innumerable acts of creativity.

Watch live streaming video from newplay at livestream.com

This year, the video has title cards to identify each play and playwright. But if you just want to know what my plays are, they're "Welcome Home," at 19:40 on the video, and "Those Americans" at 1:21:45. "Welcome Home" was in the group of plays directed by Jill McLean; "Those Americans," by Desdemona Chiang.

Discussing Chiang's clump of plays, festival artistic director Dominic D'Andrea said "They are all like little kicks in the pants: each one hurts a little bit." Which is one of my favorite things anyone has ever said about my work.

Some other personal faves this year:

• Geetha Reddy's hilarious play about yoga might have been the best thing in last year's festival. This year, she continues to prove a master of the one-minute form with two very different, but excellent, plays.
• My friend Tim Bauer got primo placement: one of his comedies kicks off each act of the show!
• Christopher Chen proves that his knack for writing odd, haunting, messed-up plays extends even to the one-minute form.
• I don't know who David Perez is, but "Cackle" is hilarious (with a great performance by Kate Jones).

Thanks to Playwrights Foundation for sponsoring the festival, and to Dominic D'Andrea for organizing the logistics and generously supporting all of the artists.

One-Minute Play Festival Video

One more bit of housekeeping from 2011: I always meant to post the video of the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival on New Play TV.  Here you go!

Watch live streaming video from newplay at livestream.com

My plays are "Forgiven," which starts at 1:06:30 on the video, and "Excuse Me," at 1:35:20.  "Excuse Me" was the third-from-last (or antepenultimate) play of the whole evening, followed by Lauren Gunderson's hilarious "One-Minute Musical" and Philip Kan Gotanda's capstone "Perfect Imperfect." I was honored to be in their company.

I really wish the show's program was available online so that you could follow along with it while watching, but if you have a question about who wrote or acted in some of the other plays, feel free to ask in my comments section and I will try to assist you.

One-Minute Plays for the Holidays

Can you believe it's December already?  Three weeks to Christmas... and two weeks to the San Francisco One-Minute Plays Festival!

I will have two plays in the festival (to be directed by Evren Odcikin and Christine Young), and several of my playwright friends are also participating, including Tim Bauer, Megan Cohen, Bennett Fisher, Marisela Treviño Orta and Ignacio Zulueta.

I love the mix of writers that are involved this year and it is an honor to be in the same festival as some much better-known Bay Area playwrights like Eugenie Chan and Philip Kan Gotanda.

Saturday December 17 at 8 PM and Sunday December 18 at 2 PM and 7 PM, at the Thick House on Potrero Hill.  Tickets here. As Ignacio pointed out, it's a 99-seat house and only 3 performances, so get your tickets now!

That's really all the information you need -- I can't tell you what my plays are about, because it's really easy to spoil a one-minute play!

Also check out the One-Minute Play Blog.

Soixante petites secondes

Spending today working on my submissions for the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. We are encouraged to think about what can happen in a minute -- how short it can feel, how long it can feel.

Here is a song that lasts only 60 seconds -- Carla Bruni's "La dernière minute":