Celebrating Wilma Chandler and 30 years of 8 Tens @ 8!

[photo by Jana Marcus]

This year, 2026, marks the 30th performance of the Actors' Theatre Short Play Festival. The brainchild of local theater director, playwright, teacher and mentor Wilma Marcus Chandler who founded the Festival back in 1995 and served as its artistic director for many years, the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival is still one of the most anticipated events of the Santa Cruz theater season. It is now the longest-running short play festival in the world.

We talked with Wilma to get her perspective on the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival, from the very beginning up until today.

What inspired you to start the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival?

It all started back at Cabrillo College in 1994 when I was looking for a production that could involve all the Theater Arts students—acting, directing, lights, make-up, sets. I was reading a lot of plays in that search, and Actors Theatre of Louisville had a book out of 10-minute play scripts—they were known for staging short plays—and I drew on that for a production called “On Newest Ground,” an evening of those short plays, which was lot of fun and very successful at bringing everyone together.

After that Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre took over the idea. There was a very strong group of local playwrights associated with the theater then, so we put out a call for scripts, and that first year—1995—we produced a show with 8 plays all written by Santa Cruz playwrights, and after that we began to expand out. Next it was open to Central Coast playwrights, and then after that to California writers, and then West Coast writers, and then it became open to writers West of the Mississippi, and then it went National and then even International, with scripts coming in as far away as London and New Zealand.

What’s the appeal of this short play format?

It’s an easy way to attract people to live theater, particularly today when we live in a different time in terms of attention span. Once the audience is in their seats they’re delighted to have so many choices in one evening, and we also get them used to being there to experience live theater. So many people are glued to their TVs and other screens for entertainment these days, so it’s a way to entice them in. With such a large cast, diverse plots, and different genres and styles, you’re sitting there and your plate is full of all kinds of options for theater that you may not have thought about before.

You worked for many years producing the Festival with Bonnie Ronzio. Tell us about that partnership.

Bonnie Ronzio and Wilma in the theater

Lena Mason was our first production manager in ‘95, ‘96, ’97, and then when she moved away Bonnie took over. Over 25 years, Bonnie and I never had a single fight. I’ve never worked with anybody in such a smooth way. We were yin and yang, although I’m not sure which was which. When one of us was cracking the whip, the other was nice. Sometimes Bonnie would be so organized and on schedule and I’d be up in the clouds, and other times I’d be there with a stopwatch counting down the seconds and she’d say, “Oh just give them a few more minutes…” She was tough as nails and actually a marshmallow. We had such a connection. If somebody got upset with me, Bonnie came in and soothed things over. And times when folks were mad at Bonnie I would come in and heal it up.

With a stopwatch...?

The plays have got to be 10 minutes. That’s how we sell them and it’s the audience expectation. I’ve noticed when sitting in the back during performances that if a play goes over that time frame by more than a few minutes, people start getting restless and stop enjoying it. So, we really work to keep things tight and in that promised time frame.

Any other keys to success?

We had a couple of rules—the main one is to always end with a funny play or one that’s uplifting. That was a hallmark for us. We never wanted the audience to leave the theater feeling bummed. There might be plays that are sad, or weird, or controversial in the show, so ending on a happy note was really important.  To be able to wind up thinking “life is good” is a good thing. I personally love weird, dark stuff, but for 8 Tens we embraced the goal of the audience leaving joyfully.

We also learned to have the play with the most difficult set come first, so the subsequent set changes could flow more easily.

Talk about the decision to expand the Festival to two nights.

We began to have so many good scripts submitted that, in addition to the 8 Tens @ 8, we were doing the runners-up from the contest later in the year as staged readings called “The Best of the Rest.” Sometimes people would comment that they enjoyed those plays as much as the ones in the Festival. I think it was around 2018 or so when Bonnie and I were looking at the plays and they were all good, and we had such a big crowd coming each year to the 8 Tens, and we had the Best of the Rest happening. One of us said, “Why don’t we just do 16.” We thought it wouldn’t be that much harder, and it actually flowed really well. Having two different nights in the festival gives even more people a chance to participate, and you can get the same crowd twice—they come back for more.

What’s one of your favorite memories from all the years of 8 Tens?

I had a play chosen for the Festival called Phone Sets, about a couple of nuns who decide to raise money for the parish by starting a phone sex business. Joyce Michaelson and Hannah Eckstein played the sisters. It was already a funny play, but then, on the last night of the show, they sat down on the sofa to watch porn (for research purposes, of course) and the sofa broke, right in front of the audience. The two of them wound up on the floor in their nuns’ habits, with their legs splayed out, and they just kept going with the lines and the audience was in hysterics.

There was the one in 2019 about two brothers eating spaghetti O’s while watching TV and hating each other. There was the one about the dead body that comes to life… So many great plays and great moments.

We’ve done over 300 plays when you consider all the 8 Tens productions plus Best of the Rest, representing over 200 writers—it’s amazing.

Anything else you’d like to talk about or share?

The plays themselves. From the very beginning, the reading committee would judge each play on literary merit—not on whether it could be mounted easily. It had to be a good script. And that made a huge difference in the popularity of the Festival. We only turned away things that were poorly written—no topic was off limits. It was all about the quality of the writing. It’s not the reading committee’s job to worry about setting, staging, casting, or any of the production elements. If the script was good, our directors, designers and crew could find a way to make it work. That was also a selling point. People knew they were coming to see what we felt were really good scripts.

I’d also like to mention how with the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival we bring together artists from every other theater company in the area, including Mountain Community Theater, Teatro Campesino, UCSC and Cabrillo College, and draw people from the high schools to the senior center—all forming a true community with great spirit. We pull together a group dedicated to working together, and it has never been contentious.

That’s my real delight—how this short play Festival has embraced so many people—with writers, directors, readers, actors, designers, stage crew, and theater companies all represented. It’s a true collection of artists from everywhere. I get comments from people who were involved in 8 Tens many years ago and still feel connected to it. That sense of community gives everyone the strength to continue both the dedication needed to pull it off and the enjoyment. It’s very rewarding. I can rest a little bit thinking, “I did something OK.” I look around at everyone who’s loving it and so excited to be part of it, and that’s thrilling to me.

The 8 Tens @ 8 Short Play Festival opens for its 30th year on January 16 and runs through February 15, with evening performances on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 pm. The two parts of the Festival, with 8 unique plays each, alternate, so it's possible to see both shows on each weekend day if you like. Tickets are available HERE.