Summer at TST

Hey there TST family!

We hope you have been enjoying your summer so far. We've been super busy these last few months because believe it or not, it’s almost that time of year again for the Audience Favorite, The TST 10 Minute Play & Film Festival. Here is what we've been up to as we prepare for October:

• Reading & evaluating over 160 plays

• Reviewing the submitted films

• Both 10 Minute Playwriting classes that have been going on since June are wrapping up this week and next. We've partnered with the organization, Young Storytellers, www.youngstorytellers.com for a 10 minute Playwriting class taught by writer member Dara Frazier and the 10 Minute Playwriting class for adults is taught by writer member Mildred Lewis. At Towne Street, we believe in artists expanding their range by trying out new mediums. We want them to realize the full scope of their talents. Towne Street is also excited to be nurturing future playwrights whose work we can hopefully bring to life on stage. Stay tuned for the recap coming to you next week!

• Preparing (rehearsing and recording) for the Virtual presentation of the 2020 10 Minute Play Festival that was cut short by the Pandemic. Premiere date - end of August/early September.

The selections of both plays and films will be announced shortly and Casting will begin in August. Feel free to submit your picture and resume here: tstsubmit@townestreetla.org

Personally, watching all the submissions come in and sorting them everyday was really exciting. It was inspiring to see so many writers who were intrigued by our theme and reading how they incorporated “Something Borrowed or Something New or Something Old or Something Blue” into their 10 minute plays.

You may have seen the blast sent out recently about Towne Street receiving a Creative Recovery LA Grant. Here's the background of how it came to be.

$31 million dollars were awarded to over 750 arts, cultural, and equity-building organizations, a historic County investment in the nonprofit creative sector. Over twenty-six million dollars of that sum comes from Los Angeles County’s allocation of the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) relief and recovery programs. To distribute these one-time funds, the Department of Arts and Culture designed and implemented CreativeRecovery LA. This initiative supports the nonprofit creative sector that is facing ongoing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, and focuses on organizations located in and serving communities most impacted by COVID and inequity. With a $26.4M total, 668 grantees, and over 1,900 individual grants awarded through the program’s innovative 5-in-1 grant opportunity design, CreativeRecovery LA is believed to be the largest single publicly funded arts grant program in the history of the Los Angeles region.

Thank you Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture! lacountyarts.org

Summer Intern

This year we’ve brought in an intern to help with the summer programming. Her name is Maya Page and she will be a senior at Vassar in the fall. You will get to know her better in the coming weeks because she is going to be our first GUEST BLOGGER!

If you'd like to sign up as a Guest Blogger, just send us an email to tstsubmit@townestreetla.org

Continue to enjoy the summer and we look forward to seeing you at the Festival.

Veronica McClelland