The Humana Festival may be a hot ticket—hot as the sun, in fact—but if you want to see a bunch of new American plays in about an hour, you’re in luck.

As you may—or may not—recall from social studies, Robert Bellarmine was the intermediary between Galileo (who believed the earth revolved around the sun) and the pope (who didn’t). Eventually the Vatican came around—several hundred years later—but Bellarmine’s namesake university hasn’t forgotten this prickly relationship. Four hundred years later, the cardinal’s college is celebrating the astronomer, albeit in a new and offbeat way. 

Result: The “Anything Galileo” 10-Minute Play Festival showcases the winners of Bellarmine University’s first-ever competition of short plays. 

The rules? Anyone could enter. The play had to be 10 minutes long. It had to be about Galileo somehow. And oh yeah, no musicals allowed. Two hundred sixty-seven entries yielded six plays, which will be produced Friday through Sunday, March 19–21, at the Blackbox Theatre at Wyatt Center for the Arts on Bellarmine’s campus, 2000 Norris Pl. 

Out of the six winning plays, two came from Louisville: David W. Overbey’s Galileo and the Vongoodnesses and Brian Walker’s Jupiter’s Moons, which the faculty-led judging panel chose as the number-one selection. (Attendees will have the opportunity to vote for an audience favorite, with the winning playright receiving a cash bonus.) Other short plays include The Galileo Factor by Eoin Carney (Pittsburgh, Penn.), Can’t Recant the Cant by Arthur M. Jolly (Marina del Rey, Calif.), Galileo Fail by Haley Rice (Columbus, Ga.) and Falling Bodies by Thomas J. Misuraca (Tarzana, Calif.).

The show starts at 8:00 p.m. General admission tickets are $8, $5 for students and seniors (cash only).

For more information, call 452-3481 or write theatreseason@bellarmine.edu.

Contact the author at leecopywriting@gmail.com or www.leecopywriting.com.

You may also enjoy: The Cherry Sisters Revisited (Part of the 34th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays)

Photo: Flickr/emmyboop