March 11-15, 18-22, Wednesdays-Saturdays 7pm, Sundays 3pm
San Miguel Playhouse, Av. Independencia 82
$300, $350

Diez Minutos 2020, the Annual 10-Minute Play Festival

Any professional writing coach will encourage you to avoid needless exposition and, whenever possible, plunge the reader or audience right into your story. One of the virtues of the ten-minute play is the near necessity to begin it in medias res – in the midst of the action. If you're writing one of these plays and haven't hit the central conflict by page 2, you probably aren't going to cross the finish line in time.

An annual theatrical rite in San Miguel is the mid-March Diez Minutos Festival, a collection of short plays chosen by international competition, and performed by some of San Miguel's best local actors. The plays are frequently though not immutably comedic.

Seven short plays will be presented this year:

• "I Am Not Miss Finkleburger," by Dorothea Cahan. A hospital patient named Lila struggles with issues of faulty medical records and mistaken identity in this comedy of errors.

• "Ordained," by Mark Harvey Levine. A mentally unbalanced woman who has just become a minister by purchasing an online certificate tries to marry two total strangers at an airport.

• "Cliché," by Keith Whalen. Two characters speak only in platitudes, as a third character struggles helplessly to stanch the flow of banalities.

• "The Deal," by Mark McGeever. Kevin attempts to buy a car from Natasha, a former KGB agent turned car salesperson who clearly has the psychological upper hand.

• "Familiar," by Robert J. LeBlanc. A poignant story of a dedicated son and his father's incapacity to recognize him, set in a hospital cafeteria.

• "Mrs. Williams, Involved Citizen," by Susan Goodell. A woman who claims to have prevented a robbery, yet has an inexplicable pile of cash, tells her story to a bewildered police sergeant.

• "Trapped," by Barry Wood. Two characters in this claustrophobic comedy appear to be stuck in – wait for it – a ten-minute play.

The festival will be presented at the San Miguel Playhouse, Avenida Independencia 82, and will have ten performances, Wednesday through Sundays, March 11 to 15, and March 18 to 22. All shows are at 7pm, except for the Sunday performances, which are 3pm matinees.

Tickets to all shows are 350 pesos for the center section and 300 for the side sections, and may be purchased at Boleto City, Mercado Sano, Ancha de San Antonio 123, Monday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm; or online.

Tickets