As If Theatre Company Announces the 2025 KENMORE QUICKIES - PLAY IT BY EAR

As If Theatre Company has announced its 5th Annual short-play festival, The Kenmore Quickies - Play it by Ear, August 8-10, 2025.

Each year the Quickies features eight prompted short plays written, directed and performed by local theatre artists. At the June kick-off event, eight directors and 14 actors were randomly assigned to eight playwrights who were given a specific prompt from which to write a ten-minute play in a four-week timeframe.

The festival will be a weekend of performances of all of the plays, with a winning play chosen by the audience. This year the prompts come from our resident sound designer and Kenmore resident, William French. Each of the eight plays will be inspired by a piece of original music French created especially for As If Theatre from one of the theatre's nine main stage productions.

After each performance, audience members will vote for the Audience Favorite Award, which will be presented after Sunday's performance, while a panel of three judges will determine the Critics' Choice Award.

“Our 5th fabulous year!” says As If Theatre's Artistic Director, Cindy Giese French. “And what better way to celebrate this monumental milestone than by honoring someone who has been with us since the beginning, our sound designer and resident composer, William French. Where usually it's the play that inspires the music, this year we're flipping it on its ear. With an amazing library of original music from our past nine MainStage productions, we've chosen eight special pieces to inspire our local playwrights. With these talented writers at the helm, we're expecting weird, wonderful, funny, and thought-provoking new works.”

Playwrights for 2025's The Kenmore Quickies - Play it by Ear are Jack Conley, Jay Cross, John C. Davenport, Mary Guthrie, Vincent Kovar, Andrew Meyers, Jessi Pitts, and Chris Shea.

Directors are Jana Blumberg, Z. Sharon Glantz, Jalyn Green, Patrick Hogan, Diane Jamieson, Rebecca O'Neil, Amanda E. Rountree, and Elizabeth Tanner. Actors in this year's festival are Nicola Amos, Ashlie Blaske, Terry Boyd, Josephine Cessna, Vinayak Dubey, Kevin Finney, Emily Hoffman, Chavi Khare, Jane Martin Lynch, Kaushik Mitra, Daisy Schreiber, Elizabeth Shields, Skye Stafford, and Yvonne Williams.