A One Minute Play Festival?
Brittany Strelluf
If you aren’t from the Kansas City area, you might not think of Kansas City as being an artistic community, but as Dominic D'Andrea has recently learned, it is.
D’Andrea is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the One Minute Play Festival. The One Minute Play Festival is a monumental, nation-wide theatre project. It includes 10 festivals a year, and Incorporates 25 cities, 13,000 playwrights of all backgrounds, as well as countless artists of all capacities.
In each city, the festival works with partnering organizations to identify programs or initiatives in each community to support with the proceeds from the work. The goal is to find ways give directly back to the artists in each community. Supported programs have ranged from educational programming, youth poetry projects, and community arts workshops.
As of this year, it is now a part of Kansas City’s brilliant live theatre community.
“A year ago, KC was not even on my radar. Now I feel like I've been missing out“
The reception of the festival has been overwhelmingly positive. “My impression and the reception has been one of excitement, dedication, determination, and positivity.‘ D’Andrea said. “I'm blown away by the excitement, dedication, and specificity of the work this cohort has generated in their writing with no previous knowledge of the work. I'm in awe that these 9 directors jumped in head-first, and cast a huge and excited cohort of actors.”
D’Andrea has good reason to be excited.Over 110 artists and community members in total have stepped up to the plate to make this event happen. This includes more than 35 playwrights, 9 directors, and nearly 60 actors. That doesn’t even include the support and engagement of othercommunity members andartists.
“Many of the plays called for diversity in representation, so I'm expecting to see a lot of diverse actors in the pool. The social media has been popping, and I have an excited and diligent co-producer in Heidi Van, who really wants this for her community. “
“For a first year festival, this is huge. Especially in a "small market" city like KC. It's not small market numbers.”
“It will be exciting to see how it all comes together, what the artists contribute in a deep and meaningful way, what conversations are born out if it, and what happens next.”
The first ever Kansas City One Minute will be performed on Saturday Jan, 30, Sunday, Jan 31 and Monday, Feb 1 at 8pmat the H & R Block City Stage at historic Union Station.
“Most of our work returns on an ongoing annual basis--so the plan is that we'll be coming back to KC once a year for several years. “
Kansas City waits for you with open arms.
To learn more about this phenomenal project go to http://www.oneminuteplayfestival.com/