Crikey! Acorn's calling for new plays again!

It happens every year.  Acorn Productions in Westbrook, Maine announces a call for new plays, and dozens of playwright hearts flutter. In April of 2013, the 12th Annual Playwrights Festival will showcase monologues, 2-minute plays, 10 minute plays, one-act plays and full length scripts. They are "looking for the best new plays by Maine-based playwrights."

There have been a couple of those years when I didn't think I had anything worthy of submitting, but I'm usually sending in at least one entry.  This year, my mind is occupied with following up the publication of my thriller A Bridge to Treachery with another novel, but I know that I won't be able to sit by and watch this deadline pass without submitting something.

This is one of the attractions of writing plays, the thrill of seeing your characters live onstage. In the case of short plays, the relatively short time frame from gestation to production can be irresistible. Writers who have worked on pieces that haven't come together satisfactorily for them yet, can start rummaging around in the drawer with a new incentive to try breathing life into them.  I'll be posting my own progress toward meeting the December deadline.                                               

Is a play script just an "information delivery system"?

In the previous post I provided a link to the book: Off Off Broadway Festival Plays 34th series. One of the short plays in the book is called
"Realer Than That" by Kitt Lavoie.  Kitt is the Artistic Director of The Cry Havoc Company, which focuses on developing new plays. www.cryhavoccompany.org

 If you follow the link you find the web page of Cry Havoc Company and the Cry Havoc Podcast, a series of recorded discussions of subjects related to developing new plays.

http://www.cryhavoccompany.org/01CRYHAVOCWellWrittenPlays.mp3

This is a link to an mp3 recording of a discussion of the "Elements of a Well Written Play"

It's interesting subject matter, complete with the assertion that a play script can be thought of as an information delivery system. A script is also described as a blueprint of a production, and as a skeleton - the structure of a body whose muscle, skin, hair etc. is provided by the director, actors, and other artists associated with a production of the play.

Playwrights may be more than a little taken aback by this. But it is an idea that is firmly dug into the thinking of theater people who also believe that the playwright often doesn't actually understand what his/her play is about, and it is only after the director and the cast get their hands on it and work with it that the play within the script emerges.

I wonder if David Mamet eagerly awaits the magic that a developmental theater company performs on a new script that he might hand over to them? I've also heard it said by some well known actors and directors that their sole purpose in producing a play is to serve the vision of the playwright.  What do you think?

Ever Try Writing a Short Stage Play?

The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival which began in 1975 is one of the nations most established and highly regarded short play festivals.  In 2009, over 700 short play entries from across the nation were submitted to the competition to select the top 40.  From these 40 entries performed over a week in New York, six short plays were chosen by a panel of theater experts and emerged as the winners.  They received a fully staged production in New York, publication, and licensing contracts. Samuel French Inc. states that the festival “fosters the work of early career writers”. Since anyone can think of himself as an early career writer, why not?

Actually, The Samuel French Festival is at the top end of the trend in the theater community at large in the US of embracing the short play.  All across the country, professional and amateur community theater companies are sponsoring short play competitions and productions. Is this because the attention span of audiences is getting shorter? Who knows? But the trend towards festivals of shorter plays is an opportunity for writers of all kinds to get more exposure than they are likely to enjoy submitting short stories for publication and waiting endlessly for a response, and all too often never getting one..

Just don’t under-estimate the level of skill required to write an effective short play. A short play is a story, no question.  But, it is a story presented almost totally in dialogue. The playwright sees the action in his/her head, provides stage directions to create the initial setting, and to lay out the character interactions as the play unfolds.  But the story is specifically designed to end up as a  live visual performance on a stage before an audience.  The audience is not privy to stage directions included in the script, nor are they provided with the thoughts and feelings of the characters except as they observe them in the actors on stage. So, writing a play involves embedding back story, exposition, and emotion in the words the characters speak, and in their physical actions on stage. The overall effect is collaborative effort involving director, actors, and the rest of the artistic team. But, it still starts with written words on a piece of paper or a computer screen. It is a story, and the techniques of the story telling craft apply.

Are stage play stories different in some fundamental way? Not really. Here are brief “reviews” of the six short plays that emerged from the winnowing process employed by the 2009 Off Off Broadway Festival: (These are sketchy descriptions of subject matter, and not meant to even approach the workings of the plays, to reveal endings or to interpret meanings.)

Drop : Mike and Ric (20-30 years old) are seated in the lead car of a roller coaster stuck at the top of a steep incline.  Ric offers reassurance to Mike who reveals that  he is afraid of heights. Jackson, apparently a repairman, appears suddenly climbing around in the scaffolding. He opines that “you gotta put yourself in danger sometimes”. Clever dialogue. A twist at the end.

The Education of Macoloco: Macoloco informs the audience that they are about to see him educated by his mother Anessa at various ages: eight, thirteen, twenty-five.  Anessa educates by requiring the boy to fire back answers to questions like: How do you know a pig is having an orgasm? The boy’s absentee father appears and speaks first in a thick german accent, then french, then russian then italian. 

Realer Than That: Jared and Colleen (both age 26) meet in an economy motel room. Colleen pounces on him and aggressively pursues sex. Back story emerges from the dialogue. They were high school lovers. She married two months after graduation.  They haven’t seen each other since. Complications ensue as Jared and Colleen reveal how the facts of their early relationship have morphed into alternate realities.

The Student: Hugh Simms (about 40) is a writing teacher and aspiring author. Burt, a 50 ish businessman is taking Hugh’s writing course in evening adult school.  Their discussion of  the story that Burt has written reveals much.  Hugh thinks of himself as a failure. Burt is taking the class not to eventually get published, but to understand himself by writing what is in his heart.

Thucydides: A soldier on his way back to Iraq meets a Princeton student in an airport. Their conversation reveals the differences in their lives and in their destinations.

Just Knots: Dennis and Patty (both 20s-40s) meet at an indoor kiosk in a mall. Dennis sells his ability to tie knots. Dennis by the end understands why Patty wants to employ him.

Seeing a play script will help in addressing questions you may have about format, or about how somebody who knows what they’re doing laid out a story.  You can buy the Off Off Broadway Festival Plays 34th Series at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_fb_0_31?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=off+off+broadway+festival+plays&sprefix=Off+Off+Broadway+Festival+Plays%2Cdigital-text%2C269

Why try to write in the short play format instead of continuing to work on your short story?

 Because the opportunities for exposure for your work seems to be greater these days in the theater world.  Feedback on your efforts seems to come quicker, and it is specific to the immediate effectiveness of the story whether it’s in the form of reactions of an adjudicator for a festival, by a theatre group or by just friends gathered around a table. The possibility of seeing your characters alive on stage will light your fire every time.

Five Reasons to Find the Novel in Your Full Length Play

In the first post I declared that there certainly is a novel to be found within your full length play.  But it won't be an easy job pulling it out. The effectiveness of the story told in a play depends so much on the director, the cast, the set, lighting, and sound -- all of the collaborative elements of the art form.  I'm not sure I completely agree but it's been said that a play is a 'blueprint" of a story.  Unless your name is Arthur Miller or David Mamet you probably are not going to have much to say about what takes place on stage.  Many grad schools in their MFA program teach that the playwright often does not even know what the essence of the story is. It takes the collaborative process to allow it to emerge. Now, that's another discussion altogether.  Let's get to the reasons to find your novel in your already completed full length play.

Reason One:  You've already tackled the hard parts.  In putting your play to paper you've decided on the central characters and the setting.  You've arrived at the essence of the story that you want to tell.  You decided long ago that this was a story worth telling.

Reason Two:  Chances are your novel will go farther than your play ever will. This is not exactly the golden age of the stage play with theaters all across the landscape eagerly awaiting the next new play. Professional theater has an extremely hard shell that few playwrights ever crack. Amateur theater groups in this country rarely if ever do anything new. It's an actor's medium, especially at the local level. Meanwhile, the publishing industry is undergoing radical change.  There's no need anymore to wait for publishing lightning to strike.

Reason Three:  Revision is easier and more fun.  You've developed a manuscript of 80 pages or more that contains your story. Now, it's fleshing it out, tweaking it, "opening it up".

Reason Four:  Your story's structure is in place.  You know what's at stake in the story. You've already created an arc.  You know what the climax is.

Reason Five:  Your characters already have their voice.  Probably more than anything else, you labored over a distinctive voice for each of your characters. Lots of the dialog can be lifted right off the page.

Can a novel be hiding out in your full length play?

The answer is yes, of course. But do you really want to go there? The proposition raises issues all over the place.  What issues?  A story is a story, play shmay, right?  Well, if you've written a full length play, you've spilled your blood all over the pages. You've chosen the stage as the place where your story will be told perhaps because you could not imagine a more satisfying experience as a writer than actually seeing your heroine alive and walking about before your eyes, and she's saying your words.  You will sit in a darkened theater and suspend your disbelief along with the audience as the story unfolds in three dimensions. Wow.

You crafted scenes that taken together are the essence of your story. You've implied back stories for all your characters that are revealed in their dialogue and their motivations. It's all clear to you and you have supplied stage directions for the director, cast and crew to make sure of it. But is it really crystal clear? Or have you surrendered absolute clarity to a collaborative conception? Above all else a play is a collaboration for sure. I mean, would a novelist ever leave the heroine's physical presence up to someone else's vision? That's exactly what happens when auditions and call backs for a play have been completed and your heroine is cast.

You see what I mean about issues. Do you really want to go there?