Centre students will participate as playwrights at festival

RELEASED: Feb. 28, 2002

DANVILLE, KY-A couple of Centre students will be pulling an all-nighter in Alabama next week, but they won’t be cramming for a test or camping out for concert tickets.

David Clark and Brendan Adkins will be participating as playwrights in the Southeastern Theatre Conference 10-Minute Play Festival held March 6-7 in Mobile, Ala. This will be the 53rd annual SETC convention, but it's the first year for the 10-Minute Play Festival.

The Festival, which includes 40 undergraduate SETC members, will begin on Wednesday evening, March 6, with the actors performing audition monologues. The playwrights will then work through the night on three-character plays inspired by the actors and the props and costume pieces they have brought to share. On Thursday morning, the finished scripts will be read by the directors. They then will be joined by the stage managers for daylong rehearsals, culminating in the public performance of all six plays Thursday at 10 p.m. followed by a critique session.

At 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday all members meet. Clark, Adkins and the other playwrights begin writing at 11 p.m. They have until 7 a.m. to finish their script. From 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. the playwrights meet with directors and stage managers to put the finishing touches on their assignments.

Clark and Adkins can then get some sleep before the plays begin at 10 p.m.

"Very rarely does one get an opportunity to test one's mettle," said Clark, a senior dramatic arts/English major from Louisville. "This is a sink or swim situation that I'm anxious to see if I can pull off. It's chaos, one of the things that thrills me about theatre. Anything could come out of it."

Clark and Adkins learned about the event while taking a playwriting class with Tony Haigh, Professor of Dramatic Arts at Centre.

"I wanted to participate simply because it sounded like a lot of fun," said Adkins, a junior from Richmond, Ky., double-majoring in dramatic arts and computer science. "I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of the participants, wracking our brains together and simply showing this can be done."
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