| Well, it's been about three months since an intrepid group of eighth and ninth graders at Summit School performed my new play, The Prince and the Slacker, so I thought it was time to think about submitting the play to Pioneer. A first production of a play is a great way to find out what works and what doesn't, and I always find it's good to get a little distance before revising.
The first thing I did was pop in the DVD of the play and read through the script as it was playing. During rehearsals we had changed a few lines, added a couple of jokes, and put in some new business, so I marked my script as I watched the DVD. This also gave me a chance to remind myself what didn't work. One scene in particular I marked for a major rewrite.
I spent the better part of a day getting the script cleaned up and up to the standards of our production. Next was to think about how I could make it as flexible as possible. Our group had been mostly boys, but I knew before I wrote the play that many drama groups have more girls than boys. I had kept this in mind when originally writing the play, so now I changed many of the parts to "flexible" roles, meaning they could be played by either a girl or a boy. This meant rewriting lines to remove "he" and "she" and taking out other references to gender. I also gave all these characters names that could work for either a male or female. In the end, The Prince and the Slacker will have at least 11 flexible parts.
Some parts, like the spoiled brat movie star Vegas Marriott, just have to be played by a girl; while others, like the frustrated French businessman Jean Claude Jean-Claude, will work best when played by a boy, but more than half the roles will be flexible—I think that's pretty good.
Finally I made one last pass, checking that all the stage directions were clear, writing a description of the set, and consolidating some scenes (my wife, Janice, who directed the original production, likes to divide the play into short scenes for rehearsal purposes).
So, The Prince and the Slacker is almost ready for submission. I'll let it sit for a couple of days and then read it over one more time before sending it off to Pioneer. If I'm lucky, in a few months you'll have a chance to perform it at your school. If you do, I can't wait to see what Vegas Marriott's costume looks like. |
