Carolyn Messina and Jorge Valero in the Florida Rep PlayLab reading of “Ten Minutes On a Bench” in spring 2024. (Photo courtesy Florida Rep)
Ten Minutes On a Bench, my vignette comedy for a cast of ranging 8-35 actors, will be produced by the theater department of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee April 23-27, 2025. An ensemble of all-freshman performers will play the many characters who meet as couples on speed dates arranged through an app that places the would-be lovers on a park bench for a ten-minute encounter.
UWM associate professor and director Steven Decker discovered the play — a collection of two-hander scenes depicting first dates — while doing an online search for ten-minute plays for students. Among producing options, the script is offered in a two-act 17-scene version or a one-act 12-scene version using eight or more actors. In discussions with Decker, I allowed him to choose the most viable scenes for his students. The presentation will be specific to the needs of the UWM company. His version features four men and seven women.
Learn more about tickets to the Milwaukee staging here.
Licensed directly through the playwright, Ten Minutes On a Bench hasn’t had its official world premiere yet, but has leap-frogged into bookings at colleges and amateur theaters. (The University of Detroit Mercy first tested a handful of scenes in a concert reading in fall 2023.) It was later developed in two 2024 readings by Off-Broadway’s Ground UP Productions and at Florida Repertory Theatre’s PlayLab that same year. In 2024-25, a handful of community theaters (in Alabama, upstate New York and Florida) put it on their season.
You can find the play on the Kenneth Jones page at New Play Exchange, or request a free perusal copy from the playwright.
The comedy’s expandable nature (there are 35 characters in total) makes it a perfect vehicle for companies — like high school, college and community theaters — that seek opportunities for a large talent pool. The only scenic requirement is a park bench; the play is set on benches around the country.
Here’s how I bill the play: “A dating app called Ten Minutes On a Bench is the latest match-making craze, placing singles on a park bench to find common ground. The clock is ticking, but there’s no limit to the variety of quirky, sexy, heartbreaking and humane conversations between dozens of characters looking for love. A new speed-dating romantic comedy about first impressions, dogs and cats, drinkers and smokers, impulse and caution, conversation and chemistry. Laugh, cheer and cringe witnessing the universal urge to connect. Sometimes, it only takes ten minutes.”
I built Ten Minutes On a Bench as an ensemble piece for eight protean actors (4M, 4W) with a specific and intentional scene order, but the casting is expandable. The characters range in age from 20s to 70s, and I like an ensemble that fits those specifics, giving opportunities to multigenerational actors. But I’m all for letting the audiences use their imaginations if young people are playing the roles. It’s more than a chance for scene-study — it’s about indulging in a sense of play. (I like the idea of supertitles projected on the set to indicate character names and ages.)
“The play should be a director’s playground and an actor’s dream,” I write in an author’s notes in the script. “This is a vignette play, a romantic comedy in fragments, a pulse-taking of a cross-section of unrelated lonely people. Think of it as a buffet, a revue, a short story collection, a box of snapshots. The organizing thread between the pieces is not a recurring character, it’s the app — but also the characters’ shared urge to connect. If you’re looking to follow the arc of one character in an entire evening, this is not that play.”
