10-Minute Play Contest

Submissions for the 2023 contest will begin this summer. Check back & follow us on social media.

You have 10 minutes to tell a story. What will it be?

Theatre Oxford’s annual 10-Minute Play Festival draws new works from all over the world. The grand prize is $1,000 plus production in arts-loving Oxford Mississippi, a town beloved for its literary history.

Selections from the 2022 Contest will premiere in the 2023 10-Minute Play Festival which will take place in February 2023 at the Powerhouse, Oxford’s arts hub.

Through this festival, Theatre Oxford encourages creativity and advances its mission to make the theater accessible and enjoyable for all. Submissions for the 2022 contest are closed in August 2022. Please see guidelines below to plan for the 2023 competition. Good luck and thank you for your work.

Rene Pulliam and Jaime Adams starring in “Miss Ida’s Magic” by Jason Milligan

Winners of the 2022 Competition

Grand Prize: 20 Avon by Kristin Andrea Hanratty

Second Place: Patients by George Kehoe

Third Place (tie): Buried Fish and Lilacs by Michael W Moon & Guestbook by Patti Veconi

20 Avon, Patients, and other plays will be featured in our 10-Minute Play Festival, February 10 & 11, 2023!

2022 10-MINUTE PLAY CONTEST
ENTRY RULES

ELIGIBILITY

  • Only original plays, never before produced, are eligible.
  • The play, exclusive of title and cast pages, may be no more than 10 pages.
  • Play should have 2-4 characters and minimal props and costumes.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

Deadline: August 15, 2022

Submission fee: $12 (U.S. dollars).

  • On the online submission form (see “How to Submit Your Play” below), include your name, play title, address, and phone number.
  • The 10-Minute Play Contest uses an anonymous review process. This means all author information (including your name) MUST be removed from the manuscript text body, headers, and file name.
  • The manuscript should be saved and uploaded as .doc, .docx, or .pdf.

Authors may submit multiple plays, but each play submitted must be accompanied by an entry fee.

Assemble script as follows:

  • First page: Title, cast of characters, time and place information.
  • Second page: First page of the script. The other pages of the play follow.
  • NAME OF THE PLAY AND PAGE NUMBERS ON EVERY PAGE, starting with the first page of the script.

All plays are judged anonymously. Five finalists will be chosen; every author who submits will be notified of final judging results.

All authors agree to permit Theatre Oxford to produce their contest-entry play if the theater should wish to do so. In addition, the winners will appear in a limited-run print edition (100 or fewer copies) of the selected plays for our festival. Authors retain copyright and full ownership of their plays.

Prizes

  • Grand prize: $1,000 and production of the winning script
  • Second prize: $250
  • Third Prize: $100

Thank you and have fun!

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PLAY

After assembling your script according to the above instructions, please:

  1. Go here https://oxfordarts.com/shop/product/3861-TO_10Subs to the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council website to pay the $12 submission fee.  
  2. Once you have paid the fee, you will get a link to our online submission form where you can upload your script. (Note: if you don’t have a Gmail account, you can send the script directly to our email address theatreoxford@gmail.com after you’ve filled out the form online)

Once you’ve sent us your play, you will receive an automated confirmation via email. Please query if you haven’t received this confirmation within 24 hours: theatreoxford@gmail.com.

Questions? Please email theatreoxford@gmail.com

10-Minute Play Contest FAQs

Why do you ask for (optional) demographic information?

This information is entirely optional and no one submitting is required to provide any information about their age, nationality, level of education, race, etc. However, the Theatre Oxford board wants to take this opportunity to get some information about what demographics our marketing was reaching, and see where we can work harder to get the news out about this contest, festival, and Theatre Oxford in general. Thanks for providing us with your info so that we can learn more about ourselves as an organization

What is your reading process? 

Round 1: 15-20 readers receive anonymous packets of 10-minute plays and rate them according to a five-question rubric, establishing their favorites from their packets.

Round 2: A smaller play-selection committee reads the finalists from round 1 and chooses first prize, second prize, and third prize. These winners are notified personally as well as on the website. In addition, we hope to provide some personalized feedback to all finalists from round 1.

How are plays chosen for the festival?

We will produce six to eight 10-minute plays during our festival. The winner of the play contest is guaranteed production. A couple of the plays produced will be solicited from local authors. The other plays in the festival will be chosen from our pool of contest finalists, alongside a couple of plays we have solicited from local authors. The play selection committee will choose these based on a variety of criteria, from playability (“does Theatre Oxford have the resources to actually produce this?”) to fit (“does this work well with the other plays we’ve committed to producing?”) to audience (“do we think our audience will like this play?”). So the second- and third-place winners will definitely be in the pool of finalists and potential plays to produce, but we aren’t committing upfront to produce them.