The Winners for 2019
1st Place Winner
Alexa by Joe Godfrey, Woodbury, Connecticut
Artificial intelligence goes amuck when a playwright, attempting to come up with a good plot for a short play festival, jokingly asks his Amazon ECHO for help. Things fly out of control when he realizes that "Alexa" is trying to take over!
2nd Place Winner
Taking Away the Sting by Scott Gibson, Evergreen, Colorado
"Sting" is a gentle dramedy set aboard a city bus. One commuter "gifts" a fellow passenger with a small houseplant to commemorate their one-year anniversary of riding the bus together. Since the two men don't actually know each other and have never exchanged a single word until this moment, the gesture comes across as being more unsettling and creepier than it does sweet and endearing...
3rd Place Winner
Only Essentials by Michael P. Adams, Glendora, California
While facing evacuation from their home due to an approaching wildfire, a couple find a box tucked into a closet corner. Inside are their gay son’s ashes. Reminiscing about what they've lost, they question whether to take the box with them or leave it behind.
Soap Box by Flavius L. Brown, Memphis, Tennessee
Two nameless strangers from very different walks of life meet on a busy street corner. One offers the other a gift with no explanation. Motives are questioned, philosophies challenged, and books are judged by their covers
A Bubbe’s Gift by Ellen Davis Sullivan, Andover, Massachusetts
A Jewish grandmother gives her granddaughter a surprising gift, but it isn’t what’s in the box that makes
the present mean so much.
A Gift with Purchase by Christopher Wiley, Palm Springs, California
A Gift with Purchase is the story of two gay men on Pride Day morning ten years into the future. They receive their allotted government medicine ration to cure HIV, but there is only one dose available to them
The Box by Libbe HaLevy, Tujunga, California
What if you were given a box that you were told had in it the answers to all the questions that seem to have no answers? Would you open it… or not? And what would you do with that information if you were the only person who has it? That’s the dilemma facing an average person who falls into an extraordinary situation.
David Foster Wallace Expounding in an Elevator (The One-Up, Two-Down Rule)
by Christopher Cotton, Germantown, Tennessee
“Say the universe’s Bureau of Squaring Things Out detected a major rule violation in a particular elevator. I mean, they’d have to send David Foster Wallace, right?”
My Darling Love by Joe Gulla, Scarsdale, New York
“MY DARLING LOVE” tells the story of David, a gay New Yorker (70’s) and his strained relationship with his “Grand Nephew” Milo (20’s). Milo has purchased a vinyl record (a “45”) of Stevie Wonder’s hit, “My Cherie Amour” on eBay for David. It is special because it is the ACTUAL record from New York City's legendary Stonewall Inn’s jukebox! This gift inspires a heated dialogue between two gay men…
from two VERY different generations.
A Little Empathy by Phil Darg, Maple Grove, Minnesota
Where are we? Why are we here? No one knows . . . all we know is that someone is down – unable to get up – and another person stands by passively – watching as they struggle to rise. A Little Empathy is an abstract tale of aspiration set against the generally unsympathetic nature of humanity.
HEREHEIS by David Couter, Chattanooga, Tennessee
A father and his transgender son have an impromptu funeral for the father’s former daughter. Witty and heartfelt.
Our 2018 10 Minute Play Fest Info
Last Years Winning Playwrights
Did You See Elizabeth Taylor? By Garrison Phillips
Manhunt by Terri Foltz
AWAKENING by Roy Proctor
Something About The Eyes by John Barrow
Is She or Isn’t She? By M.E Tudor
A Night Out By Michael P. Adams
WAKENSTEIN By Mackenzie Worrall
Across The Room By Bethany Dickens
1st Place Missed Connection by Natalie Higdon
Garrison Phillips is a 1951 graduate of West Virginia University, a Korean War
veteran, and a retired actor who has been a member of Actors Equity since 1956. His blog, Everyday Strolls is in its tenth year while his essays and short stories have been published in the Allegheny Regional Family Historical Journal, the Inter-Mountain, New York Native, SAGE Newsletter, By Actors, For Actors, Storyteller Magazine, Apalachee Review and on line in Chelsea Station. His book of West Virginia short stories, Back On Cheat, published in 2016, is available on Amazon and Kindle. Garrison was a voluneer for Gay Switchboard in 1974, headed the Phone Tree of GLAAD in 1985-6, and in Washington, DC represented SAGE in 2005 at The Make Room For All conference and testified for Older Adults Technology for the FCC Hearings in 2010. He was a guest of Chris Hayes on MSNBC the night Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was ended by President Obama. Stonewall National Museum and Archives recently filmed an interview with him for their LGBT History Project. He now lives in Fort Lauderdale where he continues to write. Garrison will be eighty-nine in October 
Roy Proctor wrote his first play in 2012 after retiring from a 30-year career as the staff theater critic on the two daily newspapers in Richmond, Va. Since then, he has completed 89 short plays that have been fully produced, accorded staged readings and/or produced as podcasts more than 200 times in 24 American states and in 10 countries on four continents. His short plays have been produced on the stage in a Pacific-to-Pacific arc extending from Los Angeles to Chicago, New York, London, Stuttgart, Bangalore, Misawa (Japan) and Sydney. Proctor writes all kind of plays, but he specializes in short-play adaptations of classic short stories in the public domain, especially stories by Anton Chekhov. He lives in Richmond and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
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John Barrow grew up in Georgia and lives in New York City. His latest play, Lillian, Paula, Carson--about Carson McCullers' unexpected visit to Lillian Smith in 1953--was named winner of the 2017 Southern Playwrights Competition. His one-act comedy, Richard Nixon’s Neighbors, was broadcast by Shoestring Radio Theatre in February 2018. His plays have been seen and heard at Cap21, Stonewall Rep, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Morningside Players, The Midtown International Theatre Festival, The Bechdel Group (all in New York), Mockingbird Public Theatre (Nashville), Key West Theater Festival, Live Ink Theatre (Fernandina Beach), Dad’s Garage (Atlanta). Other awards include playwriting grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Wisconsin Arts Board; and residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and the William Flanagan Center (Albee Foundation) in Montauk, NY.
Teri Foltz is both a playwright and a poet from Kentucky. Her Ten-Minute plays have been produced in San Diego, Vancouver, Louisville, Cincinnati and NYC. Her second full length play, Incorrigible, won the Roots of the Bluegrass Best Play in 2017. She is a retired high school English and Theater teacher.
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Michael P. Adams is an award-winning writer currently living in the greater Los Angeles area. His short fiction has appeared in over a dozen literary journals. He has also published poetry and a short screenplay. A graduate of the MFA program at San Jose State University, Michael is incredibly grateful to Emerald Theatre Company for making "A Night Out" his first produced play.
Mackenzie Worrall is a playwright based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s trained at The Second City in Chicago and an immersive theatre study program in the United Kingdom. Other theatrical credits include being a Board Member and marketing chair for WCT in Columbus, where he also directed, and Literary Manager for Epiphany Theatre Company in Erie. Film credits include Assistant Director on Furious Saint Jack & Otter, Alone (2014) and production assistant on Dads (2015). Mackenzie also hosts a podcast with fellow playwright Chris Leyva about storytelling and animation, called Writers Get Animated.
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Bethany Dickens is a playwright, actor, and arts advocate from Orlando, Florida. Her creative writing centers on issues of human connection and community, echoing her personal commitment to supporting the arts through mentorship and engagement. Her works have been performed at theaters including MadLab of Columbus, The Actors Guild of Parkersburg, and FUSION Theatre in Albuquerque. Her first full-length play, Exit Wound, was a finalist for the Actors Guild of Parkersburg’s Give Voice Initiative and Fusion Theater selected her as the 2018 Andaluz Award Winner for her ten-minute short, “Inevitable.”
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Natalie Higdon is a writer living in Memphis, Tenn., with her boyfriend and two cats. Her play "Connection Not Available" was selected as a finalist for Emerald Theatre Company's Second Annual 10-Minute Play Festival. She received her Journalism degree from The University of Memphis and her writing has appeared in City Lab from the Atlantic, Birchbox, and The Downtowner Magazine
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