The 10 Minute Play Festival
Writers Wanted!
Posted on the: 09 Mar 2009
By: Deborah Fulton-Anderson
Welcome to the Creative Writing Forum, the web site of the Creative Writing Club (CWC) Luxembourg (and so much more). This is a reminder that the New World Theatre Club & the Creative Writing Club Luxembourg are in the preparation stages of: Luxembourg's first 10 minute Play Festival
First-time writers or experienced playwrights have been invited to submit. Deadline for submissions March 31, 2009. Workshopping the plats will occur on March 13 & 27 (see upcoming events for details. Selected plays to be produced for Festival in November 2009.
www.nwtc.lu or www.creativewritingclub.com
Info: Deborah Anderson 2633-1433
One of our members, Celeste Celeste Koehler, has written a short piece on the challenge and the process of writing a 10 minute play.
"I had never written a play before, 10 minute or otherwise, so I did some reading on the subject. I found a good website 10-MINUTE-PLAYS.COM which was an excellent resource. How To Write A Ten Minute Play (Twelve Rules For The Aspiring Playwright) I found particularly helpful. The site also offers some examples of Ten Minute plays by some known and unknown playwrights. Some were very good and others I knew I could do better, so that itself was inspiring.
It really did help to read plays I didn't like and try to imagine what a difficult job an actor would have being expected to do something with a lousy script. It made me think about the responsibility the writer has to the actor to provide a character worth getting to know and become, however brief the encounter might be.
The same site also has a short section on Ten Minute Play Structure. As a neophyte to this genre, I had no idea my play needed a structure so this info was very helpful. I'd like to say I wrote y plays carefully following this guideline but I didn't. I wrote the plays with the flow that felt right to me but then made sure I had all the necessary elements in the rewrite and, as it turns out, they were in the correct order. The point for me was to crank out the story first and then worry about all the structural pieces fitting together after I had a beginning, middle and end.
The other key ingredient to the Ten Minute Play is brevity. Every word must count and there is no place for the unnecessary. I had a hard time with this at first finding myself with a twelve minute play and certain I couldn't cut another word. I was wrong. This is an excellent exercise in editing and forced me to find the words to deliver the same impact while taking up half the white space. The second play I wrote came much easier and ended up too short. I padded it a little with a few lines to round out one of the characters but instead of dialogue, lengthened it with stage activity
as words only seemed to dilute the impact of what was already written.
Summarizing what I have learned I would say a good Ten Minute Play requires the
following:
A. Complete story with beginning, middle, and end.
B. Conflict between characters.
C. Characters who want, need or dream of something and express it through dialogue.
D. The protagonist learns something, discovers something or experiences something in the play which may or may not change the character or his situation but the struggle of this education/experience affects the character profoundly.
G. The audience needs to relate to the characters and/or the situation they find themselves in.
Trying my hand at a Ten Minute Play was a great challenge for me as writing a play is something I never considered. I really enjoyed this exercise and will continue to write plays. One of the plays I wrote is an adaptation of a short story I wrote years ago. I loved the characters in the story (Emma and Miriam) but for some reason the story never quite worked. I realize now my ladies were too big for the page and belong on the stage.
I thank the NWTC for this opportunity to stretch my cramped writer's hand, and for helping Emma and Miriam find their way home.
Celeste Koehler
Aspiring Playwright
February 25, 2009
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