ShortLived Longevity by / Amber Adrian

Three days before the opening of ShortLived, the largest audience-judged playwriting contest in the nation, PianoFight cofounder Rob Ready races into the Tempest late and distracted. “Putting all this shit together is a lot more complicated than it has been,” he says. “I am totally frazzled.” In a conciliatory gesture he buys me a beer and a shot, and half an hour later we’re watching PianoFight’s promotional videos on his phone and I’m shouting questions like, “Is that a bear in a wig? Where the hell did you get a taxidermy bear in a wig?” (Where, indeed? I never did find out.) This seems to be standard operating procedure for PianoFight, as it fulfills its ongoing quest to promote theatrical community via beer and good-natured feuding.

“Theatre needs better rivals,” says Ready of the theatre world’s entirely too civilized demeanor. So PianoFight has assumed this noble theatrical task. Most of the participants of ShortLived—a rotating cast of 25, eight directors and 28 playwrights—know each other, drink with each other, and are genuinely hoping to crucify each other with the help of the audience. “It’s great,” says Ready. “There’s shit-talking, and this year we’ve got a pool going for each of the rounds. Because there’s that element of competition, people aren’t just like phoning it in.”

The origins of the contest are rooted in a frantic attempt to stave off booking disaster. Ready and his partner Dan Williams took over management of one of the Off-Market theatres in 2007. When a company slated for a three-month run bailed a few weeks before their opening, the new managers were left scrambling to fill the spot. After some panicked brainstorming sessions, they raised the phoenix from the ashes and ShortLived was born. “People really responded to it,” says Ready. “Probably because they get to say things like, ‘That was shit!’ We encourage that.”

At first, life was a little shaky for ShortLived. “We were nobodies putting out a call for scripts, so we got the dregs of Craigslist,” claims Ready. “We read a lot of stinkers.” He continues, “We put up some stinkers.” Daniel Heath, the first ShortLived champion (and not a stinker) won in a drunken recount after the wrong winner was announced on closing night. But it soon started picking up steam, with a two-night run in Los Angeles the second year. This year includes a house band and another run in L.A. This is also the first year they’re clamping down on locals only. “The biggest thing for us with this event is community,” says Ready.

With a lineup that switches every two weeks of the three-month run, plays that didn’t make the audience cut are replaced with new ones. The first cycle, in April, featured a helpful stalker, an awkward first date that becomes even more hilarious when you realize you were on this exact date a week before, a trip to the zoo and the aforementioned six-foot-tall stuffed grizzly in a blonde wig. By far its strongest year in terms of writing, ShortLived leans heavily toward the funny and the quirky.

“Theatre needs to open itself up a little bit,” says Ready. “I feel like it’s been very shut in for the last 40 years, cloistered up in an office somewhere writing grants. It’s like, come on down to the Tempest. It’s a good spot, nobody’s writing any grants. Leave that shit at the door.”