Tune in this week to Theatre Odyssey’s first-ever radio theater broadcast of its annual Ten-Minute Play Festival. The 15^th fest will feature eight plays chosen from works submitted by Floridians; originally, they were to be produced as full production stage plays last May, until Covid-19 wreaked havoc on live theater schedules.

Now, those stage plays have been converted to radio plays and will be broadcast starting Thursday, Oct. 15 until Sunday, Oct. 18, available 24 hours a day.

The plays are written by both local playwrights and those in other parts of the state. Plays include: Final Curtain by Marvin Albert (Sarasota), What I Got Nobody Wants by John J. Kelly (DeLand), We Interrupt This Program by Arthur Keyser (Sarasota), Finding Help by Marj O’Neill-Butler (Miami Beach), Single Rider by Michelle Pascua (Celebration), Solastalgia by Sylvia Reed (Palmetto), Happy Mother’s Day by Fredric Sirasky (Sarasota) and The Mis-Trial of Anne Hutchinson by Bernard Yanelli (Bradenton).

Festival adjudicators are our area’s leaders of community theaters, Murray Chase of Venice Theatre, Rick Kerby of the Manatee Performing Arts Center and Jeffery Kin of The Players Centre for Performing Arts. They will read each play, imagine them as they might be seen on stage, and decide the best play and the runner-up. The author of the best play will receive $500 and the runner-up $300.

Tickets for the festival start at $5 per listener and are available for purchase here. You will receive a password upon the purchase of a ticket; you can then visit www.theatreodyssey.org from Oct. 15-18, enter the password, sit back and enjoy.