Einstein once explained the concept of relativity by saying, “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.” In that sense, this year’s staging of 8 Tens at Eight, the annual short play festival put on by Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater, is an excellent lesson in relativity.
For 16 years now, Actors’ Theatre has put out an open call for original, unpublished 10-minute plays; a blind jury selects the eight best among them for staging. The stories told include a meeting between a rabbi and a stock trader, a parent-teacher conference, a futuristic experiment and discussions between couples at all stages of relationships.
To use Einstein’s metaphor, the two prettiest girls, The First Thirty Minutes (featuring the respective inner monologues of a couple on a first date) and The Intended (in which an older couple debate whether or not to accept an invitation to dinner), are so funny and sweet that they’re over all too quickly. Not so for the hot stove among the bunch, At the End of Eight Years, a portrayal of the painful end of a relationship—painful for all parties involved (audience included).
Ultimately, the real pleasure for the audience is in seeing how the same backdrop (painted with snippets of dialogue from each play), the same actors, and the same time constraint are used to different effects. Ten minutes is not a lot of time, but it is pliable enough to either be stretched uncomfortably or compressed into a series of beautiful, funny and fleeting moments.
This is the last chance audiences will have to catch 8 Tens, or any other Actors’ Theatre production, at the Art Center. The Jewel Theatre Company will be taking over the space in the Center Street building starting next month. The call for submissions to next year’s festival, to be held at a location to be decided, is now open; the deadline is June 1.
8 TENS @ EIGHT runs Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm through Jan. 30. ‘Best of the Rest’is Wednesdays at 8pm through Jan. 26. Actors’ Theatre, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. Tickets $12.50-$18. BrownPaperTickets.com or 831.425.1003.
