By Adam Pulchinski
Special to The Free Press
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Launa Helder had been looking for the opportunity to make her directorial debut since graduating from Minnesota State University with a theater degree.
So when she was asked by a young writer to give advice on the play “A Ticket for My Cat,” Helder asked if she could direct it.
The play — one of 20 being performed as part of the second Minnesota Shorts Festival of Plays — is a comedy featuring three actors with a runtime of less than 15 minutes, as is a rule of the festival. The play also has the distinction of being written by the festival’s youngest writer, Sophia Tomany, who is 13 years old and entering eighth grade at Dakota Meadows Middle School.
“The play stands up on its own feet,” said Helder, 37, who also acts as a board member for Mankato Mosaic, an organization producing local art and theater. “But knowing it was written by a 13-year-old is refreshing. It’s simplistic, yet mature.”
“A Ticket for My Cat” centers on a college-age student working the ticket counter for an airline. A man calls the airline looking for a ticket to China for his cat. The play is a back-and-forth between the characters and the young woman’s boss. Helder found it witty and appreciated how the play shows someone solving a problem to get out of a situation.
“It’s about how to turn something bad into something good,” Helder said.
This isn’t Tomany’s first foray into theater, or other artistic endeavor for that matter. Tomany, who moved to the United States from Germany when she was 4 years old, has written three books. She has also been involved in several projects at school and has written short parodies of teen books.
“I’ve always liked to tell stories,” Tomany said.
Tomany’s father, Peter, told her about the Minnesota Shorts Festival after reading about it online. After some editing, they e-mailed “A Ticket for My Cat” to Greg Abbott, founder of the festival.
Abbott started the festival after attending a similar one in Northfield.
“If a place like Northfield can pull it off, why can’t Mankato?” Abbott said.
Last year was the first time the festival was presented, and the selections were made from a field of less than 50. This year there were more than 100 submissions from all over Minnesota, the U.S. and even far away places such as Australia and Toronto.
After the March deadline, submissions were judged and finalists were notified in May. The playwrights whose work was chosen to be part of the festival received $100 as part of a grant from the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council.
Some of the playwrights who entered are fairly well known. According to his biography on the festival website, Mark Henry Levine from California has had more than 500 productions of his short plays all over the world. They have been translated into French, Hebrew, Japanese and Portuguese.
Duncan Pflaster is a New York playwright who has won several awards for his short plays. His play in the Mankato festival is called “The Fugly Train” and centers on two women riding the subway who discover their fellow passengers are less than desirable looking.
While Levine and Pflaster may have national recognition, they are joined in the Mankato festival by seven playwrights from the area. Writers from Bemidji and St. Paul will also have their works performed.
The content of the plays is as diverse as the people who submitted them. From Tomany’s tale of a ticket for a feline, to Pflaster’s subway passengers, to a play about Maud Hart Lovelace’s characters Betsy and Tacy, Abbott said audiences will see a real variety on the stage. There’s even a play for people who might find a cooking show by zombies of interest.
“It’s a good intro to the theater,” Abbott said. “It can be drama, or it can be comedy. The topics are all over the board.”
