The "Fall Feast 2003" began as a contest sponsored by Not Quite Opera. The parameters were: unproduced, original works for the musical stage by Bay Area authors.

From the numerous submissions we received, Not Quite Opera's Artistic Director, Anne Nygren-Doherty and the company's board winnowed it down to 5 finalists: Charles James Ver Burg's "Shoe," Diane Sampson and Ronnie Klein's "Writes and Rewrites," Richard C. Kogl's "The Right to Fabulousness," Michael Kaulkin and Donna Kaulkin's "The Ghost of Wu" and Brad Erickson, Trauma Flintstone, Elaine Magree, Dwight Okamura and Julie Queen's collaboration "Burning Louise."

Over a period of 9 weeks, Anne went over the scripts with the authors to select representative scenes that could be enjoyed in a 2 hour festival. In this process, Anne and the authors develop a "trailer" version of the show. This is a boiling-down process that takes the authors through their stories in such a way that they begin to discover a more powerful direction for their plays. Sometimes, new music must be added, characters dropped or changed, music deleted and replaced, etc. As visitors can see in the videos of the shows, this process keeps up right on into presentation, which is done in a hybrid "reader's theatre" style: some actors still carry scripts, sets and costumes are kept to an allusive minimum, the orchestra trimmed to a single live piano.

In every manner, the "Feast" is managed as a full production: Not Quite Opera runs publicity in local papers, books a professional venue, hires top local talent (who generously donate their time and services in exchange for the rare opportunity to perform in wholly original works), etc.