One of the most eagerly anticipated wintertime announcements is the name of the plays selected for the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which this year runs from Feb. 29 until Apr. 10. No less significant, yet usually announced several weeks after the names of the full-length works, are the names of the winners of the National Ten-Minute Play Contest.
This year's four 10-minute plays, announced Fri., Feb. 6, are "Kuwait" by Vincent Delaney (Minneapolis, Minn.), "A Bone Close to My Brain" by Dan Dietz (Austin, Tex.), "The Spot" by Steven Dietz (Seattle, Wash.), and "Foul Territory" by Craig Wright (Los Angeles, Calif.). The plays will each receive a pair of performances near the end of the festival, Apr. 3 and 4, in the 637-seat Pamela Brown Auditorium.
Delaney was also named a co-winner of the Heideman Award, a prestigious prize made possible by a sustaining grant from the estate of the late Ted Heideman. The Los Angeles-based writer Yehuda Hyman, who wrote a ten-minute play called "Swan Lake Calhoun," will share the prize with Delaney.
This year's 29th annual Humana Festival will also include an anthology project called "Fast and Loose: An Ethical Collaboration." It is being created by four playwrights: José Cruz González, Kirsten Greenidge, Julie Marie Myatt, and John Walch, and will be directed by Wendy McClellan.
By any measure, the Humana Festival remains one of the most important forums for new works in the U.S., having produced over 300 plays by the likes of Tina Howe, David Ives, Tony Kushner, Romulus Linney, Jane Martin, Donald Margulies, Marsha Norman, and Naomi Wallace. Three festival plays—"The Gin Game," "Crimes of the Heart," and "Dinner With Friends"—have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The mission of the National Ten-Minute Play Contest is "to discover outstanding ten-minute plays by unknown or established playwrights."