ABOUT WE LIKE SHORT-SHORTS

• We Like Short-Shorts: A Festival of 10-minute Plays started in 2013.

• In the 1st year it had about 35 entries and 4 judges.

• In the 2nd year, it had over 350 entries from around the world. The volume overwhelmed the small judging panel.

• In the 3rd year (and thereafter) entries were limited to North America, and the judging panel size was increased to accomodate the large volume of entries.

• Judges do not work as a group; they work individually and they don’t know who all the other judges are.

• Each year at the time the window for submissions is opened (usually in July), guidelines and procedures for submissions are published on the website.

• As submissions arrive, a technical screening of each submission is done to confirm that all guidelines are followed. Those that are found not to comply with the guidelines are disqualified. Those that qualify go into the competition.

• Judges are chosen by Judy Simpson Cook, Artistic and Executive Director of The Storefront Theatre, based on her knowledge of each judge’s theatrical credentials and diversity of experience. Typically, judges are chosen both regionally and nationally.

• The judging is done in multiple rounds whereby in each round a group of plays is sent to the judges for scoring. Each play is scored on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest score). At this stage of judging, the plays are not judged in competition with each other but each one solely on its own merits as a play.

• Each judge has his/her own set of qualities they are looking for and do not see scores from the other judges. One judge may give a specific play a score of 1, whereas another judge may give the same play a score of 10. This helps ensure that each play receives a fair assessment across a wide range of opinions and biases. Also, the judges do not know who the playwright is for any of the plays they are judging. Information about the playwright is removed from the plays sent to the judges. They are judging only the quality of the play as they see it.

• The number of rounds of judging is determined by the total number of plays in the competition. Each round consists of about 20 plays until all the plays have been seen and scored by every judge.

• After all the plays have been scored by all the judges, the scores for each play are aggregated and then sorted from the highest to lowest. From this sort, the top 20 or so plays are selected as finalists in the competition. In this final round, the judges, for the first time, rank the plays against each other to determine the first and second place winners and the honorable mentions.

• For the We Like Short-Shorts festival, the Artistic Director takes the two winners of the competition and selects seven or eight of the honorable mentions for presentation. While based largely on the final rankings, consideration is also given to the types and subject matter of the plays in order to provide the audience with a well balanced blend of comedy and drama and of serious and fanciful topics.