196667 Resource 105337 166872 101704 1202412188112 1203004125505 Controlled Revising, Revising, Revising

Getting a New Play Ready for Submission

Well, it's been about three months since an intrepid group of eighth and ninth graders at Summit School performed my new play, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Prince and the Slacker</span>, 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.<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div>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.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div>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, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Prince and the Slacker</span> will have at least 11 flexible parts.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div>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.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div>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).</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div>So, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Prince and the Slacker</span> 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.</div> 10 application/xml false children's drama children's scripts children's theatre childrens scripts creative writing flexible casting high school theatre Pioneer Drama playwriting revising Summit School Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 mglassman 64.62.58.1 false true false false true 105337 blog blogsite/PioneerDrama/web