I imagine a lot of art pieces start with a single good idea and get expanded with supporting content that isn’t as good as the original idea. In the “10 by 10″ format, each of the ten plays is only ten minutes long, so there’s no time for supporting content — you just get the good idea. It seemed like that way at the Ten by Ten in the Triangle show we saw at the Carrboro Arts Center last week.
Technically, most of the plays ran a few minutes more than ten minutes, but no one was complaining as the quality was good throughout. The entire show of ten plays and intermission took 150 minutes. The set changes between plays was very fast, often less than a minute when they just had to move a couple of chairs. The minimal sets did forgo the extra dimension of set design in the presentation.
Speed Mating was probably my favorite. Written by a mathematician, it featured four cicadas in their brief emergence to mate after 17 years underground. The actors made the most of their wings and bug eyes to capture the stages of cicada activity.
Dead Cat was also notable just because it seemed like an exercise in how much can we put into a ten minute play. Narration was mixed with “live” scenes and flashbacks. It all went together seamlessly, but I don’t remember the message.