MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - You can study an oil painting in a minute. Or read a couple of haiku. But seeing an entire play?

They may not be theatrical masterworks, but the world now has a slew of plays made for the short-attention-span set. Credit the One Minute Play Contest: a scriptwriting bonanza in which competitors have just that long to tell their stories.

About 90 people submitted scripts this summer for the contest, dreamed up by the Minneapolis-based Playwrights' Center as a way to connect the public with American theater. Six plays were chosen as finalists, three each in student and adult divisions, with winners to be named in September.

The abbreviated format was a challenge for Julie Tosh, a fifth-grade teacher and published playwright from Sewickley, Pa., who mastered it well enough to make the finals. In her piece, which she described as a "feminist manifesto," a woman outsmarts three men vying for a spot in a lifeboat.

"You don't have any room to monkey around," Tosh said. "Everybody in the play has to act fast and act now."

Polly Carl, the artistic director of the Playwrights' Center, conceded that some people might lament a contest that seems to cater to "our snippet culture." But she also said theater fans "can feel enthusiastic about the democratic nature of it."

Carl, who chose the finalists, said the successful plays all told a story and answered the question - "How do you take a full journey in a minute?"

The ones that failed, she said, tried to do too much or simply didn't have fun with the format.