The Revolution Stage Company in Palm Springs has collected a series of short works submitted by playwrights both local and international—and is giving them a stage during the company’s first Ten-Minute Play Festival.

Part One will take place at 2 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 13, and 5 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 14, while Part Two happens at 7 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 13, and 2 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 14. Each part includes five plays.

During a recent phone interview with Gary Powers, the co-owner and producing partner of Revolution Stage Company, he talked about starting the company.

“I came out here about eight years ago from New York City. I worked in the professional theater for 35 years, and the last 15 years on Broadway as a ticket seller,” Powers said. “I was around a lot of the most professional people in the business, and I usually went to 35 to 40 shows a year on Broadway. I became sort of like a Broadway snob. No matter if the play is good or the play is bad, the quality of shows on Broadway is the ultimate.

“I came out here, and I was like, ‘The shows aren’t very good here.’ If I wanted to see really good stuff, I had to go to L.A. or San Diego or Pasadena or something. But then I was doing a show a year and a half ago at this theater in Palm Springs called the Desert Rose Playhouse. … I was in the show called Mid-Century Moderns with another guy by the name of James Owens.”

When Desert Rose closed a couple of years ago, Powers and Ownes saw an opportunity.

“We said, ‘Well, maybe we should take over that space and open up our own theater company, and try to produce quality work,’” Owens said. “There’s a lot of talent out here, and I’m not quite sure why the shows aren’t better. I’m a playwright, and I just found it difficult to get work done out here, because, unfortunately, people want to see the same old things. … We’ve been open since October, and we’ve done two original musicals already.”

The inspiration for the Ten-Minute Play Festival came from an international exercise in which he participated during COVID-19.

“There’s this group in London that does something called ‘28 Plays in 28 Days,’” Powers said. “A bunch of us here from Palm Springs participated in it, and every day, they gave you an idea for a play, or certain elements of the play, and then you had 48 hours to write a play, usually a 10-minute play. We ended up in the month of February writing 28 plays in 28 days, which was really kind of interesting. Some of them were kind of crappy, but some were pretty good. We thought, ‘Well, that would be kind of cool to do an evening of 10-minute plays,’ so we put out the word over the summer, and we invited people to submit plays.”

The goal of the festival stems from the Revolution Stage Company’s vision “to utilize the extraordinary capabilities of local artists (and) to lift up and stimulate the quality of theater across Coachella Valley.”

“We really wanted to do a play festival so that new playwrights, people who were having trouble getting their work onstage, would have an opportunity to do that,” said Powers.

Powers said they received about 40 submissions.

“Unfortunately, some of the people didn’t really read the rules, because the rules basically said that you can submit a 10-minute play, but if it’s accepted, you have to bring it to our stage as a fully developed production,” Powers said. “It’s not going to be a reading; you’re going to have to get the actors together. You’re going to have to get a director together and put the play on itself.”

Revolution enlisted the help of two seasoned theater pros to coordinate the festival: Susan Freedman, who Powers described as “a famous Canadian fringe performer who winters down here in Palm Springs,” and high desert actor/producer Kevin Bone.

“The (normal play-writing) process is you write something; you show it to your friends; you do a reading of it; hopefully somebody likes it; they give you notes … and then you do another reading, and then eventually, maybe you get a production of it somewhere. There has to be a place where people can do that kind of stuff and have the opportunity.”

Gary Powers

“As a playwright myself, I would try to get my plays in a lot of these established theater companies, and they’re like, ‘Well, we have to do something that people know; we can’t do something that people don’t know,’” Powers said. “The (normal play-writing) process is you write something; you show it to your friends; you do a reading of it; hopefully somebody likes it; they give you notes … and then you do another reading, and then eventually, maybe you get a production of it somewhere. There has to be a place where people can do that kind of stuff and have the opportunity.”

When Powers was a young theater pro in New York, he approached composer John Kander, hoping to gain a few tidbits of knowledge to guide his aspirations.

“I was like, ‘I just got out of college a couple of years ago, and I really want to learn how you develop a new musical.’ He said to me, ‘Well, come and meet me for breakfast tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you exactly what we’re doing,’” Powers said. “It was a show with Lauren Bacall called Woman of the Year. I met him every morning for a month, and he would tell me exactly what they were doing, and the reason they were doing it, and why they were changing things. It was like a masterclass from one of the most famous Broadway composers, and that’s what we’re trying to do with the Revolution. We’re really trying to help people develop new work, and it’s all about collaboration. … My philosophy is, if you do really good work, people are going to come out and support it.”

Powers hopes that the festival’s mission to support the next generation of playwrights will attract locals.

“We made the tickets really inexpensive, only $15, and the playwrights are going to have a share of the box,” Powers said. “We have 150 seats in the theater, and I think it’s going to be really cool that people will have an opportunity to come out and support new work and emerging playwrights. Who knows? You may get to see a brand new 10-minute play from the next Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or David Mamet.”

The Ten-Minute Play Festival will take place at 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 13; and 2 and 5 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 14, at the Revolution Stage Company, 611 S. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs. Tickets are $15 per performance. For more information, visit revolutionstagecompany.com.

Supporting New Works: Revolution Stage Company’s Ten-Minute Play Festival Gives Aspiring Playwrights a Stage is a story from Coachella Valley Independent, the Coachella Valley’s alternative news source.