The Short, Cool Summer On 14th Street

Anne Corbett, head of the Cultural Development Corp., and Jeremy Skidmore, whom she hired to run the Source Festival. "Even as it grows and grows, it's still a corps," Skidmore says of D.C. theater. (By Michael Temchine For The Washington Post)

Skidmore was surprised, too, at the extraordinary volume of short plays submitted from across the country. He'd expected his judges to be wading through about 300 of the 10-minute plays; the festival received three times that many. For the comparatively longer one-act plays, Skidmore and his associate producers solicited pieces from certain playwrights; among the writers being showcased in the final week are Sheila Callaghan, J.T. Rogers, Julia Cho and local Charter Theatre's own Chris Stezin.

But first, theatergoers will be served dim sum-style, as the spartan Source space makes room for drama started and finished in the blink of an eye. (If the plays happen to feel like anything longer than that, they're in trouble.) The 10-minute play -- a form popular with theater festivals as value-added, on a shoestring -- offers a mere sip of an artist's talent.

Gary Garrison, executive director of creative affairs for the Dramatists Guild, the professional organization for playwrights and composers, says ideally, a 10-minute play should be more fully developed than, say, a sketch. "It should be a complete experience in storytelling."

"Very few people do them well," adds Garrison, who's created his share of them and become so well versed that he wrote a book called "Perfect 10: Writing and Producing the 10-Minute Play." "It's simple storytelling," he says, "in a complex form."

If the festival is all about hearing original voices and novel ideas, ticket buyers who remember the old Source will no doubt feel comfortable with the new Source. Although new stairwells have been added, new windows were installed, and the lobby is now a hard-not-to-notice shade of bright green, the performance space itself is virtually untouched. The floors and even the chairs are holdovers from what came before.

On a recent weekday, Corbett walked through the renovated building, showing off the amenities, such as the new dressing rooms behind the stage, replacing the ones that used to be reached by a narrow staircase. She's got her fingers crossed that the festival will set a tone for the years to come.

"I feel a great deal of responsibility that my organization was entrusted with this piece of history," she says. "I feel a great deal of responsibility about doing it right."