Northwest Ten

11/18/2024

5 hours of long deliberation today culminated in 18 chosen plays to be pushed through to our guest judge (Clarence Coo). This year we received a strong 70 submissions with a wide range of themes from playwrights from all around the northwest ! It is in the expert hands of our guest judge now to choose our line up for the 2025 season 🤙 Thank you to our 2025 reading committee:

Ari Aquila-Saund
Dale Light
Eryn Sherk
Wendy Beck (literally manager).
… plus the Producers.

11/06/2024

Director applications still open!

https://www.octheatre.org/nw10

11/04/2024

Review of The Last Yiddish Speaker currently playing at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. The play runs for one more weekend, highly recommended!

The Last Yiddish Speaker, now playing at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, offers a chilling version of the near future. This thoughtful new play by Deborah Zoe Laufer is reminiscent of dystopian works by Sinclair Lewis, George Orwell and Philip Roth.

10/29/2024

This play is absolutely terrific, extremely well written and brilliantly directed, and acted! Bravo to everyone involved.

Staring Payton Rosen as Sarah and Rebecca Nachison as Chava

"Powerful."
"All I can do is hold my heart..."
"Dark, upsetting, haunting, yet with humor and humanity. See it."
Audiences are being profoundly moved by THE LAST YIDDISH SPEAKER, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere. Two weekends left—see it before it's gone!
octheatre.org/lastyiddishspeaker

10/27/2024

Attention prospective Directors! NW10 is currently looking for directors for their upcoming 2025 season! No experience necessary, just a willingness to work with others and collaborate! Click here for more information and for the application. You will be contacted by a producer once we review applications!

https://www.octheatre.org/nw10

10/27/2024

DIRECTOR CALL!
Northwest 10 has opened their director interest form for the next annual festival of 10-minute plays. Extensive experience is NOT REQUIRED! Join a collaborative team of PNW playwrights, producers, actors, and technicians to create the next installment of a beloved tradition.
Please read more and fill out your interest form before November 17 by visiting octheatre.org/nw10.

10/23/2024

Here is a brilliant article about the World Premiere play of The Last Yiddish Speaker opening this Friday at Oregon Contemporary Theatre.

(photos from Interact Theatre in Philadelphia, not Oregon Contemporary Theatre fYI).

Deborah Zoe Laufer’s new play, now kicking off its rolling world premiere at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre, imagines an eerily plausible fascist future.

10/18/2024

Attention Directors!!

DIRECTOR CALL!
Northwest 10 has opened their director interest form for the next annual festival of 10-minute plays. Extensive experience is NOT REQUIRED! Join a collaborative team of PNW playwrights, producers, actors, and technicians to create the next installment of a beloved tradition.
Please read more and fill out your interest form before November 17 by visiting octheatre.org/nw10.

10/14/2024

Opening October 25th!!

Sarah is struggling to survive her senior year of high school - new town, new school, and new boyfriend. She and her father Paul are also struggling to survive...

10/03/2024

Introducing our 2025 guest judge - Clarence Coo.

Clarence Coo was born in the Philippines and grew up in a crowded, multilingual household in Virginia. He writes about language, class, and sexuality. His plays include On That Day in Amsterdam, The God of Wine, The Birds of Empathy, and Beautiful Province (Belle Province). His work has been produced or developed at Primary Stages, the Atlantic Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He has received fellowships from the Dramatists Guild of America, the Lark, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Playwrights Realm, and he has been the recipient of a Whiting Award and the Yale Drama Series Prize. He is a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and an alumnus of New Dramatists. In 2023, his play Chapters of a Floating Life was the winner of the Weissberger New Play Award.

“I’m so excited and honored to be your guest judge!” – Clarence

*The guest judge is responsible for reading the twenty play finalists chosen by the Northwest10 reading committee (from the pool of submitted plays), and then choosing what they believe to be the strongest eight with two alternates. The NW10 producers, at their discretion, may accept chosen eight or exchange any of these for the alternates. The goal of the producers is to select the best eight plays as a line up for the Northwest10 season.

09/28/2024

Like most of our shows, this one will SELL OUT! So don't play games about getting your tickets.
https://thevlt.com/sawprov/

09/18/2024

Meet your producers!
Erica Towe, Paul Dunckel, Amy Weinkauf, and Martin Fogarty.

09/01/2024

Play submissions now open !!

We are accepting only the first 100 submissions, open now. Click on the submission guidelines below on the link below and READ CAREFULLY before submitting.

Best of luck playwrights 🤙

NW10 2025!------------------------------- Check back for Audition Information. Auditions will be held in January 2025. Auditions for NW10 are open to adult actors (18+) of all abilities, identities and experience...

08/28/2024

If you haven’t seen No Script Society before, they are worth the price of admission! 🤙 Hilarious group!

So this is happening. Please mark you calendars. It will be a tortuously good time!

08/26/2024

- A History of Northwest10 -

Northwest10 (NW10) originated in 2008 from the creative mind of Paul Calandrino. Teaming up with Connie Bennett, Richard Leinaweaver, and with support from Lord Leebrick Theatre Company (now Oregon Contemporary Theatre) the original producers set out to put on an evening of original short form plays all by local writers. The focus of the festival was (and still is) on the playwrights’ work with emphasis on development and collaboration with neighboring artists.

Initially, submissions were solicited via invitation to local playwrights and included plays written by producers. The name NW10 reflects the festival’s intended audience and local roots. As the festival grew, submissions expanded to first include all of Oregon, then adding neighboring Washington State, then British Columbia, and more recently Idaho.

NW10 is now in its seventeenth year, with over eighty play submissions each year! The producing team has evolved over time; the original producers were joined by others, and when the founders stepped aside, new volunteers stepped forwards, always with the support of Oregon Contemporary Theatre. In recent years there has consistently been a group of four dedicated community producers with diverse and significant theater backgrounds. In addition to the producing team, NW10’s play selection committee includes hard working readers. Play enthusiast (and librarian) Wendy Beck has served as the volunteer literary coordinator almost since the start of the festival. Wendy ensures submissions adhere to the festival guidelines before distributing them to readers who spend many weeks reading and discussing each play before choosing a group of 18 to 20 top submissions which are forwarded to a guest judge. The guest judge, often a playwright, director, or literary manager, has the task of sifting through the top submissions to select the eight finalists and two alternates. There are over fifty talented and dedicated individuals (on stage and off) that go into making each season of NW10 possible!