Update: (much over due!) We made it to the Finals!
As I write this the Festival is now over, and Perseids took home a number of honors:
- crew takeover award for “Best Drama”
- Festival award for “Best Playwright”
- Actor’s Circle Award for Steve Smith
- Best Poster (crew takeover award) (designed by our amazing director Kaylin Saur)
- And “Friendliest Team” (crew takeover award) -which is true – Benedict Heaps, Steve Smith and Kaylin Saur, in addition to all being ridiculously talented, are some of the nicest people out there. Is it because they are from San Diego? Is there something in the water there? Further testing needed.
There was an astonishing level of talent at this year’s festival, to even have a piece among this group was amazing. Being acknowledged by the “crew” – the people who watch these plays over and over as they shepherd them thru the process – is an honor beyond measure. Festival Director Ashely Karp and Producer Soda Persi deserve tons of praise for making this opportunity possible for all of us here in the LA area (and the non-local playwrights as well), bringing so many of us together, and reminding us what we are capable of, even in these challenging times.
I’ve added Perseids to my Plays section, if you would like more info.
Update: We made it to the Semi-Finals! This team did a great job, I couldn’t be happier. You have one more chance to catch this short piece along with the other semifinalists.
Saturday
November 15 2025,
7:00 PM
The Victory Theatre
3326 W Victory Blvd
Tickets (part of the Brando Group): https://shortsweethollywood.stagey.net/projects/12987
I’m headed back to the Short+Sweet Festival Hollywood again this year, this time with my short piece Perseids. It’s being directed by Kaylin Saur, whose background is eclectic and wonderful in the best possible way. We got a nice write up in “Broadway World” acknowledged new and returning artists to the festival.
Perseids is another piece I wrote for a Theatre Unleashed 24 hour show (really, I should just do that all the time – the weirdest and and most interesting things come out when I’m on a deadline and my butt is glued to the chair). For the uninitiated, 24-hour shows are exactly as advertised: literally produced in 24 hours. Writers (usually 6-8 of them) get prompts Friday evening, have to turn in 10-minute-ish scripts by Saturday morning, when directors and actors arrive to rehearse, tech starts sometime midafternoon, and by 8:00 pm the audience arrives and the curtain goes up. They are a blast.
Sometimes the writers get a prompt, sometimes a theme, sometimes a prop or a setting, and often we will be told what actors (gender/age range) we’ll need to incorporate. How exactly those suggestions are incorporated is up to the playwright. For Perseids I was given a quote, and told I needed to write for two men. Left to my own devices (always a bad idea) I will opt to write female characters. I feel more comfortable understanding their life experience and want to tell our stories, and as a performer myself, I have an interest in adding to the canon of roles available for women. So this prompt forced me to write something I might not have come up with on my own and, truthfully, I really do love the dudes in Perseids. I hope you will too.
Perseids
Written by Wendy Gough Soroka
Directed by Kaylin Saur
starring Benedict Heaps and Steve Smith
Saturday, November 1, 7:00 PM
Sunday, November 2, 6:00 PM
The Victory Theatre Center
3326 W. Victory Blvd.
Burbank, CA
Tickets available as part of the “Marx” group: https://shortsweethollywood.stagey.net/projects/12882
Perseids is a two-man speed-run of the consequences of making assumptions when it comes to love. Despite their differences, Alan and Hank find themselves irreversibly altering each other’s lives one starlit evening as their romantic ideals collide in what the playwright calls “a play for women that just happens to have men in it.”
Tickets: https://shortsweethollywood.stagey.net/projects/12882
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