L.A SHORT
PLAY FESTIVAL
Since 2008, the Los Angeles Short Play Festival (formerly LA Views) presents a select group of diverse writers that embrace and reflect on a different City of Angels theme. Past festivals have featured stories from L.A.’s history to its contemporary concerns. Themes have explored L.A hunger, gentrification, the economic recession, the 20th year anniversary of the civil unrest of April 29, 1992, and silent film legend residents of the historic Alexandria Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. In 2019, our theme tomorrowLAnd explored the idyllic concept of a tomorrow land and the idealism that nurtured the origins of modern Los Angeles and its eventual future blossoming or decay.
"Our short play festival provides an opportunity for Los Angeles based playwrights to be inspired by and write about Los Angeles. We are grateful for our Playwrights’ Group, which continues to explore all that is meaningful for us as artists, but also to mirror the concerns of our fellow denizens in this great City of ours."
Armando Molina | Artistic Director
festival history
2008
TEN MINUTES AT A TIME
With laughter, tears, hope, sorrow (and even 70’s music,) the eight playwrights involved in LA Views bring you 10-minute stories that leave you questioning your own understanding of community and all it encompasses.
2009
TALES OF PRESENT PAST
Inspired by Silent Era Movie Stars who populated the once-glorious Alexandria Hotel with grandeur and elegance. Luminaries of the Silent Era are the inspiration of contemporary Los Angeles playwrights in this festival.
2010
HUNGER IN THE CITY.
Exploring different faces of hunger in humanity are not limited to cravings for food, but wants and needs of the human spirit: the activist hungry to be heard, the son famished for his father’s love, or siblings starved for the understanding to accept their differences.
2011
DOWNTOWN CURREN(T)CY
Lives Looking for Change From Pershing Square to Skid Row and Art Walk, these individuals in the City's core struggle to make "cents" of their existence.
2012
APRIL 29, 1992
April 29, 1992 features 8 short plays set in the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest that followed the exoneration of four LAPD officers involved in the Rodney King beating. The unrest sparked widespread looting, assault, and arson. In all, 53 people died, thousands more were injured, and property damage topped 1 billion dollars. Twenty years later, these plays dig through our City’s ashes and offer accounts of a time whose impact on Angelenos is still being assessed. From business owners to looters, newscasters to people trapped in the darkness of it all, a diversity of perspectives shed light on the legacy of 4/29/92.
2013
pLAylist
pLAylist hits ‘play’ on some of the best L.A. Songs. It’s a (playwrights’) mix-tape to Los Angeles, to its freeways and palm trees, traffic and culture, language and the Hollywood dream. Our pLAylist goes Drag Queen to Transgender teen cruising, “Whittier Blvd” on the Eastside, Hipster “Free Fallin’ ” on the “405″. It’s East meets West, It’s a mix of current-day Hollywood Blvd evokes Hollywood past, Thee Midniters with a Morrissey clash or an Asian Girl Rapper to the MacArthur Park Undocumented, we mix-it-up like that! This is “Dedicated to you..” so hit play and/or rewind to replay the feeling when someone gives you a mix-tape. Time to hit pLAy!
2014
TRAFFIC JAM
Traffic Jam, Toll roads, buses, human cargo, and road closures of the mind, ...the vastness of Los Angeles beckons, but so many things get in way.
2015
AT YOUR SERVICE
At Your Service is theater in service of the unheralded workers who serve us daily. Those who many walk-by without notice, give our keys to, clean, feed, and care for our children and elderly. At Your Service explores the lives of carwasheros to uber drivers, hot dog vendors to shoe shiners. It's theater of immigration, the American Dream, and Los Angeles
2016
CRIMINALEYES
Are you judge and jury? In CriminalEyes seven commissioned playwrights explore the prejudices and biases that lead to the criminalization of the other. From minorities to the poor, from youth to immigrants. The eyes have seen the writing on the wall and they are not all in agreement. Come see for yourself!
2018
SANCTUARY
What does sanctuary from fear, hate, prejudice, violence, and oppression look like? Sanctuary is about feeling safe. Whether it’s safe from ICE, a school shooter, or gentrification. In the tenth anniversary of our LA VIEWS play festival, Company of Angels explores the meaning of sanctuary (protection, fairness, equality, and refuge) as played out in the lives of Angelenos. In an evening of eight short plays by local playwrights, "LA Views X: Sanctuary" examines the American ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within the current political climate in which, at best, many feel unwelcome, and at worst, are targets of hate.
2019
tomorrowLAnd
tomorrowLAnd explores the concept of a tomorrow land and the idealism that nurtured the origins of Los Angeles. Is that idealism manifested today or is still a far-reaching goal that may never come to pass? Is the future of LA utopian, dystopian or will it all just fall into the ocean?
2020
What’s Going On?
Inspired by Marvin Gaye's 1970's hit song, these 5-Minute Plays are set during the uprising in Los Angeles and the world that's followed the murder of George Floyd by Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The unrest, like in 1992, has sparked widespread protests, looting, assault, and arson, all during a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 143,000 people in the United States alone.
keep it
going.
The L.A. Short Play Festival is generously funded in part by our sponsors, foundation partners, and our largest and most reliable source of funding, YOU.