Every year, ten-minute plays form the foundation of countless short play festivals, theatre conferences, and developmental staged readings across the theatrical world. Theaters are constantly putting out calls for ten-minute plays, and savvy playwrights have a diversity of short pieces at the ready to fill various festival themes, from “new beginnings” and “crossroads,” to plays highlighting the LGBTQ experience and world holidays. Whether you’re a veteran playwright looking to get an untested short on its feet or a newcomer to playwriting interested in exploring short form work for the stage, Writing the Ten-Minute Play is a four-week workshop class meant to help guide writers from a blank page to having a short piece ready for the stage. During and between each class, participants will read and discuss model examples of ten minute plays, experiment with various generative prompts, and choose one of their play ideas to develop into a workshop-ready draft, to be read, discussed, and critiqued by their fellow playwrights. Participants will leave the class with a polished draft of a new ten minute play and a broader awareness of production and development opportunities available for when their piece is ready to send out into the world.
Sam Heyman (he/they) is a queer, Jewish playwright and novelist based in Nashville, TN. A proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Sam is an active part of his writing community, both locally as an instructor for The Porch Writers Collective and virtually as producer of the Playwrights Thriving Reading Series. Sam’s plays have been developed with support from the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Valdez Theatre Conference, the Midwest Dramatists Conference, the Desert Playwrights Retreat, and the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, among other organizations. In 2025, Sam’s play [the inner universe] was an Epiphanies New Works Festival semi-finalist and was presented as part of the inaugural Act Out, Diva! New Play Festival in Asbury Park, NJ. In 2026, Sam’s play, The Lover and the Fighter, was named a semi-finalist for the Del Shores Foundation Writers Search and was presented as part of Lakewood Theatre Company’s 2026 Playwrights Festival. With plays and prose published by Ordinary Space, Typehouse Literary Magazine, CBR, Meeple Mountain, River and South Review, and Smith and Kraus, Sam’s writing can be found on New Play Exchange and his website, heysamhey.com.
"I went from knowing almost nothing about playwriting to feeling capable of actually creating something cool. Thanks, Sam!"
"Sam taught an excellent class. I liked the blend of instruction and practical exercises. More playwright content, please!"
"This was a great class that felt very accessible as someone just entering this specific sphere of playwriting, but also back into creative writing in general after years out. Sam delivered good examples of the subject matter and breakdowns that gave thought and insight."
