Tag Archives: Theatrikos

Play Wins Contest, Writer Absent

1 Reply

stage fright

I’m pleased to announce that my ten-minute play “The Real Deal” is one of seven winning plays in this year’s Northern Arizona Playwriting Showcase. The seven short plays will be given a staged reading on August 28, 29, and 30. I’ve submitted to the contest before, under the guidance of various NAU Creative Writing faculty. Last year, I volunteered to be a reader for NAPS 2014, and was typecast to read for “Morons,” by William Baer. This year I’m honored the judges selected one of my plays, and I hope my Flagstaff friends will be able to attend. However, I will be absent, as I will be starting graduate school in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s a two-day drive back to Flagstaff, and plane tickets are expensive.

The few times I’ve dabbled in theater have been rewarding, as well as painful. I’ve written, directed, and acted for fundraiser plays, and my experiences taught me that volunteer theater is a collectively-driven form of indentured servitude. The drama you see on stage is nothing like the drama behind the curtain. As a moron for NAPS 2014, I discovered the difficulty in holding a script while using props on stage. As with all volunteer activities, there is the challenge of people committing but dropping out at crucial moments.

Although I’ll be several states away from the stage, I’m still proud of my little play. Perhaps I’ll find similar contests in Lincoln; perhaps I’ll even see a full-length play of mine performed. Of course, that will never happen unless I keep writing.

Time to break a leg.

-jk

Ten Minutes to Tell a Story

1 Reply

TheaterEvery year, Flagstaff Theatrikos hosts a 10-minute playwriting contest, and this year I intend to enter. I’ve submitted plays in past contests, but they all had one thing in common: there was too much in the plot to fit into ten minutes.

The rules are simple. There can be no more than three characters and the play should be no more than ten pages, and must not involve complicated scenery or props. Apart from the rules there are certain parameters that a ten-minute play should reside within. To move the plot, it is best to have a change in action every two to four minutes. It should be like a short story, with a beginning conflict, a middle crisis, and an ending resolution. Because other people volunteer to direct the plays, stage directions from the writer should be kept to a minimum.

On the surface, it’s just one more writing contest. At the same time, it’s different from short story contests because in this case, the audience watches the story unfold rather than imagines it unfolding. It’s an opportunity for a writer to pack a great deal of information into a thin wedge of time for a live audience. For me, writing plays has always been more difficult than prose. My plots have always been too ambitious, too embedded in history, and had characters too complex to develop in sixteen hundred words. A few years ago, one of my plays was about the Napoleonic Wars; another was about Irish independence from England.

Conversely, the few full-length plays I have written have always been too short, and involved plots and characters more suited for a sitcom. How can I pack conflict, crisis, and resolution into ten minutes and keep it important? Similarly, how can I make a simple story worth telling? The deadline is fast approaching; this will likely be my last opportunity to enter, and I’d like to be able to hone this particular skill, like packing five weeks worth of luggage into one carry-on bag. It’s a unique challenge, and the entire Watergate scandal simply won’t fit into a ten-minute play, no matter how hard I try.

Enough thoughtfulness and reflection. I have a play to write.

-JK