Ouachita Stories

Ouachita Baptist University and its Department of Theatre Arts will host the 10th annual 10-Minute Play Festival on Saturday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Verser Theatre. Also known as All Night Theatre, the 10-Minute Play Festival will feature several student-written and -directed one-act plays. The festival is free and open to the public.

Auditions for the festival will be held Thursday, March 8, from 5-7 p.m. in Verser Theatre. Rehearsals will begin on Friday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. and will continue through the night in preparation for the final show on Saturday. Participation in the festival is open to students of any major.

“We send out e-mails looking for writers and directors, and while we choose who the directors will be, we choose teachers to read scripts and vote on their favorites,” said festival coordinator Garrett Whitehead, a sophomore theatre arts major from Cleburne, Texas.

After plays are finalized and chosen, all students are invited to try out for the plays.

“We try our hardest to make it diverse in picking actors and directors so they have an opportunity to fellowship and make new friends,” Whitehead said. “Since they are randomly selected into plays that we pick for them and they don’t know their cast until the night of rehearsal, it really brings people together to rely on each other.”

The festival gained its “All Night Theatre” nickname due to the fact that the chosen actors gather the evening before the performance to rehearse and perfect their assigned plays, often working into the early hours of the morning.

Whitehead said the event coordinators anticipate a large crowd at the festival, which draws students from across campus.

“People come wanting to see what their friends have been doing and what they’ve been texting them about," Whitehead said. "The audience also gets to vote on who wins the special awards we give out at the end of the night.”

Whitehead, along with Blaine Surber, a freshman musical theatre major from Sulphur Springs, Texas, and Jordan Miller, a junior musical theatre major from Rockwall, Texas, serve as coordinators for this year’s festival.

For more information, contact Garrett Whitehead at [email protected], Jordan Miller at [email protected] or Mary Handiboe, OBU associate professor of theatre arts, at [email protected] or (870) 245-4157.

By Breanne Goodrum