Friday, December 6, 2024
Hawkeye Bookshop Christmas unites the generations
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Tulsa's Spotlight joins the club
The first four productions that Spotlight so graciously (and tastefully) selected? They were:
- The Enchanted Bookshop, December 2022
- How I Met Your Mummy, October 2023
- An Enchanted Bookshop Christmas, December 2023
- Madhouse!, March 2024
As I've mentioned previously in this blog, I visited Tulsa several times when my older daughter Ashley lived there from 2014 and 2016. I loved the city, being impressed with how clean and modern it was, with a wealth of wonderful ethnic restaurants and surprisingly underused freeways.
Sadly, although I remember seeing My Big Fat Gay Wedding at the American Theatre Company there, I never got around to seeing The Drunkard, the longest running production in American theater history (71 years and counting), performed by the main company at Spotlight itself.
As for the children's theater, it looks like they're not quite done with me. Their 2025 season schedule shows that they've reserved a spot for The Stinky Feet Gang in August.
Hmmm. Maybe it's time for a Six Timer's Club?
For info on all these plays an more, please visit my playwright page on the Pioneer Drama website.
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Aristotle was wrong
They say a good teacher learns as much as their students. I don't know how good a teacher I am, but I do know I learned a lot teaching my class on the Hero's Journey at the Arizona Thespian Festival this weekend. Above all, I learned that a quite a few people really don't like the Barbie movie.
But more on that later.
This is the second time I taught the class at this conference, and third time overall (I also taught it at the 2016 Colorado Thespian Conference, just before I moved to Arizona). But this time, in a very late move--like the night before my class was scheduled--I made a bold and possibly risky modification to the lesson. I changed my template from a three-act structure to a four-act structure.
Sacrilege, I know. The three-act structure has been ingrained in our culture going all the way back to Aristotle's Poetics. And it makes sense. As writers, we inherently know that every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.
But what does that middle consist of? And how do we as writers keep the tension building so that we don't lose steam there?
Those are the questions that were bothering me as I was preparing for the class on Saturday.
The answers came, as they usually do, from Blake Snyder's groundbreaking screenwriting book, Save the Cat!
Blake presented his story template as a three-act structure as well. But he divided Act 2 into Act 2A and 2B. And he gave them different names. Act 2A is Fun & Games. Act 2B is Bad Guys Close In.
He also claimed that the midpoint of the story, which divided Act 2 into two equal halves, was the single most important plot point in the story. More important than the acceptance of the challenge that separates Act 1 and Act 2 and more important than the final push that separates Act 2 and Act 3.
It's almost as if he wanted to call them two different acts but didn't feel he could get away with it because of, well, that Aristotle guy.
So as I was preparing my presentation, I finally got to the point where I'd had enough of trying to justify why we call it a three-act structure and just call it what it is. A structure with four acts that were equal, in importance as well as duration. This would make things easier to understand for beginning writers. And it would drive home the point that writers really need to make that midpoint big. Like life-changing big.
It also dovetailed nicely with an observation I'd previously made about those two arbitrarily-divided halves of Act 2. As I discovered, they often take place in completely different physical locations, just as Acts 1 and 3 do.
For example, in Star Wars, the locations of the four acts are:
- Tatooine
- Millennium Falcon
- Death Star
- X-Wing fighter
While in Legally Blonde, the four locations are:
- Southern California
- Harvard Law School
- Professor Callahan's law firm
- Courtroom
Committing myself to this brave new playwriting world, I went into the classroom on Saturday excited and, yes, I suppose a little nervous.
I was assigned two sessions, both in the afternoon. Unfortunately, neither one had as many students as last year. The first session only had twelve students. The second session had a few more, but the students kept coming and going so it was hard to get a definitive count. I would guess it averaged around twenty. And this in a classroom with over 100 seats.
But no matter. The sessions started well--even if I did have to shout when the musical theater class next door broke into very loud song. The students, as always, enjoyed showing off their knowledge of Star Wars trivia. And they were very good at figuring out which events in the film matched up to story beats in the Hero's Journey.
It was when we got to Barbie that things got interesting. I'd mentioned in my last post that I'd chosen this movie because I figured a lot more kids would have seen this movie than Legally Blonde. This was based on my trip to Idaho earlier this year, where only three kids out of a hundred knew the 2001 Reese Witherspoon vehicle.
Well, big surprise! In each session, there were around three students--always boys--who hadn't seen Barbie. And when I asked kids to raise their hands for Legally Blonde, I found that about the number--mostly but not entirely boys this time--hadn't seen that movie either.
So, unsure of how things would work out, I launched into my discussion of Barbie. And it was clear from the outset that even the students who'd seen the movie weren't as familiar with it as they were with Star Wars. They didn't know the names of the characters and they didn't remember the key events of the story.
But they knew the ending. And that's what made things interesting. After a fairly subdued discussion of the Act Two break, and the Midpoint, and the fact that there really was no Act Three, things got very passionate very fast as we came to the ending. You know, the whole "I'm here to see my gynecologist" thing.
Everyone either loved it or hated that ending. Those who hated it (about a third of the class) said it was too ambiguous and unsatisfying. Sure, Barbie had become human, but that wasn't enough for them. They wanted her to find her purpose. They wanted her to choose a career. And they wanted to know what that career was.
Those who loved it, while acknowledging the ambiguousness of the ending, felt it was realistic and satisfying in its own way. After all, humans don't always know what their purpose is. At least not when they're young. The important thing is the search for it. And now that Barbie was human, she could.
I lean more toward the second group. I don't think any one career would have been satisfying to us, the audience. What would she be? A toy designer? A gynecologist.
No, my problems with the movie lay elsewhere. I wanted there to be more of a struggle to defeat the Kens in Act Four. And I don't like how Barbie's external goal (taking back Barbieland) and her internal goal (finding her purpose) were so completely unrelated.
So what do I do next year? Well, I definitely plan on returning to the thespian festival with this class. After teaching it three times now, I'm more convinced than ever that understanding the Hero's Journey and three-act structure--sorry, four-act structure--are vital to the development of young writers. And I was gratified--and not a little surprised--to see how many budding playwrights from last year's class chose to attend the class again this year.
But now it appears I have the flexibility of choosing either Legally Blonde or Barbie for my second film. Legally Blonde is great because it follows the Hero's Journey so closely. But I believe there's a lot to be gained by studying how Barbie veers from that template and what effect that has on us as audience members.
One thing's for sure. I'm going to ask for one of the small class rooms. I think there will be much more give and take if everyone is sitting close to each other.
And I'm definitely going to see if I can get a room next to a mim class.
Monday, November 18, 2024
The Hero's Journey in Barbie
Of the 438 posts I've written over the last 13 years, far and away the most popular one is The Hero's Journey in Legally Blonde. Not quite as popular, but still getting a healthy number of views, is The Hero's Journey in Star Wars. And I think that's great.
It shows how important storytelling is to our culture. To our species. And it reflects how truly passionate storytellers are (and really, aren't we all storytellers?) about improving their skills so that they can better captivate their audiences.
I've seen this myself. Both posts came from a writing workshop I gave--first at the Colorado Thespian Conference in 2016, then at the Arizona Thespian Festival last year--based on my simplified, seven-step version of Joseph Campbell's original Hero's Journey (by way of Blake Snyder).
Eager young writers packed the rooms where I taught, and discussions were energetic, even heated at times. The kids attending the workshop really wanted to understand--to absorb--all the ins and outs of the Hero's Journey.
I'd chosen these films for three reasons:
1) They exemplify the specific story beats of the Hero's Journey extremely well.
2) They're nearly opposites in genre, setting, and theme.
3) Almost everyone has seen them.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Idaho, where I last led this workshop in February. Kids didn't know Legally Blonde any more. Out of 100 students attending my workshop, only three had seen it. And obviously this killed any conversation around the movie.
So when I decided to repeat the workshop at this year's Arizona Thespian Festival, I realized I had to replace Legally Blonde with a different movie. But which one?
Well, it had to be something that everyone in today's generation of kids has seen. It had to follow the Hero's Journey pretty closely. And I really wanted it to be female-centered, with many of the same feminist themes as my original choice.
There was only one possibility: 2023's Barbie.
I was a little worried though. I wasn't 100% sure it actually fits all of the beats of the Hero's Journey. So I watched it again a couple months ago. And guess what? It doesn't. After all, co-writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach come from the indie world, where plot takes a back seat to characterization and mood.
But I figured that was okay. As long as I could explain how it differs and why, it would be worth discussing.
So let me stop yappin' and give you my analysis of the Hero's Journey according to the Doll That Changed the World.
1) Status Quo
We start the movie in Barbieland (the first of our four worlds), a pink paradise for Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her friends. They're dancing. They're partying. It's a perfect world in which every day is the best day ever ("So was yesterday, and so is tomorrow, and every day from now until forever.").
2) Catalyst
But everything changes when a dark thought enters her mind. "Do you guys ever think about dying?" she says. The music stops with a ear-splitting record scratch as the other Barbies quit dancing to stare at her in horror.
As I teach in the workshop, the catalyst is always an external event, a shock to our hero's life that originates from outside the hero. In Barbie, however, it seems to be internal to our hero. Her thoughts of dying are just that: thoughts. And thoughts generally arise from a character's own mind.
Not in this case, however. As we are soon to learn, they come from the Real World and, more specifically from Gloria (America Ferrera), the mother of the girl who used to play with the Barbie. So, as strange as it may seem, the thoughts are in fact an external event.
If the initial state of the hero's world is negative, then the catalyst must be a positive event. In Barbie, the initial status quo is positive, so the catalyst must be negative. And this one definitely is, changing Barbie's world so that things aren't so perfect anymore.
She wakes up with bad breath. Her shower is cold. Her toast burns. She falls from the roof of her house. And, worst of all, her feet turn flat (oh, the humanity!).
3) Accept the Challenge
Barbie wants to know why she's having these thoughts, so she visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), our first mentor, to find out what she knows. This beat couldn't be more clear as Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie a clear-cut, Matrix-like choice: a high-heeled shoe, which represents the status quo, and a plain old sandal, which represents traveling to the Real World.
Consistent with the Refusal of the Call (which is the second beat in Joseph Campbell's seventeen-beat Hero's Journey but does not appear in my version because it doesn't always occur in popular movies--cough, cough--Legally Blonde), Barbie at first chooses the high-heeled shoe. She's afraid of the Real World.
But Weird Barbie won't allow that, and when Barbie still refuses the sandal, Weird Barbie points out that choosing the high-heeled shoe will inevitably lead to Barbie getting cellulite, a fate so horrifying to our hero that she immediately changes her mind and joins Team Sandal.
And so, Barbie enters the Real World--the second of our four worlds--traveling by car, boat, rocket, bike, camper, snowmobile, and rollerblades to get there (with Ken going along for the ride).
4) Fun and Games
This isn't a single beat in my template but the entirety of Act 2. Here, mistakes are made by our hero and her clingy sidekick as they fumble their way around the new world they've entered.
Barbie and Ken make their entrance into the Real World wearing ridiculously bright neon colors, which earns them the derision of bystanders. They say wildly inappropriate things to strangers. They even get arrested for stealing new outfits. But these mistakes are relatively harmless (and comical!) because the stakes are low. None of these mistakes prevent Barbie from returning to Barbieland any time she wants.
Bad things are brewing, however, When Barbie and Ken split up to go their own ways, Ken discovers just how different the Real World is from Barbieland. In Barbieland, the Kens are subservient to the Barbies. But in the Real World, men rule everything. Ken is thrilled to his core, setting up the darker events that will occur in the second half of the film.
Barbie, meanwhile, has her own adventures. At first, she's dismayed to learn that she, in fact, has not inspired a generation of young girls to grow up and build a kinder, more female-centered society. No, women are pretty much on the sidelines in the Real World, raising the question which will dog her for the rest of the film. If she had no real impact on the Real World, then what was she made for?
Before she can delve too deeply into this, however, she gets taken to Mattel headquarters by a some mysterious figures in a black limo. There the executives attempt to neutralize her by urging her to step inside her box.
Barbie immediately senses something is wrong and escapes. A chase through the office building ensues, and when she finally manages to slip away, she happens upon a kind, matronly figure sitting at a kitchen table. This figure calls herself Ruth, and while Barbie doesn't really learn anything from her during their brief conversation, the scene is important because it introduces Barbie to the figure who will become her second mentor. More on that later.
5) Stakes are Raised
Now comes the midpoint of the story, the beat that Blake Snyder considered the single most important one in any story. And that's because it's the beat that flips the story from bright and sunny to dark and grim. For the first time, the hero sees the true face of her enemy. And from this point on, the hero's mistakes are no longer amusing because they come with a cost. Someone could get seriously hurt--or worse.
In a drama, a minor character might die here (a development I call First Blood), a victim of the villain's evil plans. But, of course, Barbie is a comedy so there will be no death. Not a literal one anyway.
No. What dies, in a figurative sense, is the old Barbieland that our hero knew and loved. And that's because when she returns to it, she learns that the Kens have taken control, instituting a male-dominated society and relegating the Barbies to mindless, sexually-objectified servant roles.
As I said, in Act 2, Barbie always had the option of returning to Barbieland. But now she's a doll without a country. She doesn't recognize what Barbieland has become. And she definitely can't return to the Real World.
If a movie has a ticking clock, it's usually introduced at the Final Push beat. But in Barbie it's introduced here. Barbie learns she only has forty-eight hours before the Kens will vote to change the constitution and solidify their authority forever.
What in the Barbie World is she going to do?
6) Bad Guys Close In
Similar to Fun and Games, this isn't a single event but the entirety of the second half of Act 3.
Things get really interesting here because this is where Barbie significantly diverges from the Hero's Journey. In a typical movie, this half-act would run for 30 to 40 minutes and show the hero's increasingly desperate attempts to defeat the villain or, more likely, escape the villain's clutches. Either way, this can be a very exciting act, with tension-filled scenes of high-stakes action (think the escape from the Death Star in the original Star Wars).
Barbie doesn't have any of this. Instead, Stereotypical Barbie goes directly from learning that the Kens have taken over (Stakes are Raised) to giving up entirely (All is Lost).
Oh, sure. There's a brief bit about the Mattel executives following Barbie into Barbieland with the goal of getting her back inside that dumb box, but they're just comic relief. The real bad guys are the Kens (sorry, Ryan Gosling fans!).
What would a true Bad Guys Close In sequence look like in Barbie? Well, you might have Stereotypical Barbie trying to convert the other Barbies back to their former status and fail. Or you might have the Kens finding new, increasingly dastardly ways of exerting their control over the Barbies. You might even have the Barbies secretly infiltrating a meeting of the Kens to uncover some weakness they use against them. There are all sorts of possibilities.
But nope. In Barbie, the bad guys have already closed in.
7) All is Lost
So how does Barbie respond to her defeat? She gives up. Like, literally. She falls to the ground as she falls into an existential crisis, doubting her worth in a world that places a premium on practical skills. "I'm not smart enough to be interesting," Barbie says. "I can't do brain surgery. I've never flown a plane."
There's one more thing she can't do. She can't take power back from the Kens.
Sidenote: I actually cheated a little bit in the beat chart for the workshop. I show the Stakes are Raised moment as Kens Take Control and the All is Lost moment as Barbie Gives Up. But I should have used Kens Take Control for both because it's an external event that happens to our hero. Barbie Gives Up, on the other hand, is our hero's internal, emotional response to her defeat, a beat called The Dark Night of the Soul in Blake Snyder's template, which I don't include in mine. But that would have messed up my chart so I tweaked it.
Some movies have a sidekick pulls the hero out of their funk with some words of encouragement or offering a new, mind-expanding insight. Weird Barbie does try to encourage Stereotypical Barbie here, but it doesn't help. Stereotypical Barbie remains rooted to he ground, wallowing in depression and self-doubt.
Instead, Gloria is the one who finally breaks through with her speech about the crazy, contradictory demands our society places on women--arguably the most powerful scene in the film. Except that she doesn't break through to Stereotypical Barbie. She breaks through to Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), who suddenly remembers who she is: "Wait. I did write a book. It's like I've been in a dream... but what you said broke me out of it."
Note that just as there's no real First Blood in this film, there's no Death of the Mentor either, not even a figurative one. Weird Barbie is still there, trying to help. And Ruth has yet to return.
8) Final Push
9) Final Victory
10) Reward
11) The New Normal
Final Thoughts
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
The Worst Fairy Tale Ever comes to life
When I talk to theater classes, the most common question I get is: Where do you get your ideas from?
The second most common question is: What did you think of our performance?
And by far the least common question--because no one's ever asked it--is: What is your favorite part of your job?Monday, October 28, 2024
Too Many Ghosts to be published
Something spooky is coming your way. And I'm not talking about Halloween. No, I'm talking about the fact that my 31st play has just been accepted for publication by Pioneer Drama Service. It's titled Too Many Ghosts, and it's set in a hilariously haunted bed-and-breakfast in Salem, Massachusetts.
That spark of inspiration
I've spoken before about where my play ideas come from. Big surprise! They come from a whole hosts of sources: brainstorming, TV shows, old Warner Brothers cartoons, other plays, even dreams. But Too Many Ghosts is the first time I've been inspired by a TV show I'd never seen. Can you guess which one?
Bingo! It's the currently-running CBS sitcom Ghosts. When the show was first being promoted in early 2019, the premise instantly grabbed me. A show about a bed-and-breakfast haunted by not one, but a motley crew of ghosts from very different time periods? I'm there!
That's when I made the point of not watching the show. I didn't want to be accused of copying it. But more importantly, I didn't want to be influenced by the narrative choice that the creative team had made. I wanted it to make it my own.
A touch of magic
When you write a fantasy type of story--and by that I mean anything that includes magic or the supernatural--it's important to be very intentional about the rules you define for that world. That's because the plot, the mood, even the theme of the story will be driven by those rules.
For example, when I wrote The Enchanted Bookshop, these are the rules I created for the famous literary characters who are brought to life:
1) The characters are brought to life through a fairy's magic spell.
2) The characters are not allowed to leave the bookshop or be seen by humans (cats are okay!) or they'll disappear into their books forever.
3) Scatterbrained bookshop owner Margie doesn't have a clue that her book characters are coming to life.
Rule number 1 inspired the wonderful character of the Book Fairy, who's resented by the literary characters because she can be kind of a nag.
Rule number 2 is why the literary characters only come out at night, which gave me the structure of
It also set up the main conflict of the play as the literary characters are forced to choose between revealing themselves in order to warn Margie about the smugglers threatening her shop and staying silent so that they can continue to come to life.
The fact that cats are given an exception allows me to stage some humorous interactions between the cantankerous bookshop cat Bombalurina and the literary characters.
And rule number 3 provides for some additional humor as Margie suspects that the messes that the literary characters leave are due to Bombalurina.
Needless to say, if I'd changed any one of these rules, it would have been an entirely different play.
Ghost stories
It's the same thing with Too Many Ghosts, though here I went in a different direction:
1) The ghosts can be seen by anyone, but only when they choose to be seen.
2) Levelheaded owner Jo and her horror-film-loving teenage daughter Lily definitely know the ghosts are haunting the inn from day one.
3) Ghosts can't be destroyed a la Ghostbusters, but with the proper equipment, they can be shrunk down and locked away inside a small, everyday item.
Rule 1 means that the ghosts could be a threat to Jo's business, with the ghosts threatening to scare away her guests so that they can keep the once-abandoned house to themselves.
Rule 2 allows the story to cut right to the chase as Jo forbids the ghosts to haunt her guests. Of course, the ghosts can't help themselves, leading to an online review from a guest describing the place as the "most haunted bed-and-breakfast in New England." The consequence? The inn is soon mobbed by ghost-loving tourists.
Rule 3 gave me the critical turning point of the play as three marginally competent ghostbusters rid the inn of the ghosts--seemingly forever. Where did they go? And how can Jo stay in business without her primary draw: the ghosts?
After I finished the play and sent the manuscript off to Pioneer, I finally gave myself permission to read the Wikipedia entry on Ghosts. I was relieved to discover that the rules for that show were vastly different from the rules for mine. The biggest difference is that in Ghosts, only the woman who inherited the inn (and later her husband) can see the spirits. As you might expect, this means that much of the humor revolves around the awkwardness that occurs when the ghosts interact with the woman in the presence of other people and she has to pretend she can't see them. Not a possibility in my play.
Of course, the personal histories and characteristics of the two sets of ghosts also differ drastically. I've got a cranky Irish maid, a persnickety cobbler, a boisterous snake oil salesman, a self-absorbed silent movie star, and a clumsy teenager. The CBS show has a melodramatic Viking, a cynical Native American, a closeted gay Continental Army officer, a drug-addicted matronly type from the late 1800's, a flamboyant Prohibition-era lounge singer, a naive hippie, and a nerdy scoutmaster.
So yeah, mine are entirely family-friendly while theirs are quite a bit edgier. And I think that's great. There's a place for both.
Oh, I also thought that Salem, Massachusetts--one of the most haunted towns in the United States--was the most logical setting for a show about ghosts, and allowed me to tie in a little bit of the history surrounding the witch trials. But the producers of Ghosts decided to set their show in upstate New York (not sure how a Viking ended up there, though).
Playing tricks
I expect the play to come out in spring 2025. In the meantime, let me leave you with this scene from when Jo and Lily first meet the ghosts.
As the scene begins, the ghosts are hiding in the living room so that they can jump out and scare these two interlopers who threaten the sanctity of their spooky home:
LILY (Fans herself.): Do you mind if I open the curtains? It's kind of stuffy in here.
JO: Sure. I'll go bring in a couple of boxes. (JO EXITS DOWN RIGHT. LILY crosses to the curtains.)
ROLAND (Hushed, to ORLA): Now?
ORLA (Hushed.): Can ye see the whites of her eyes?
ROLAND: I don't know! My eyes are shut!
ORLA: Well, open 'em up and look! (LILY opens the curtains. ROLAND sees LILY. LILY sees ROLAND.)
LILY (Screams.): Aaaah!
ROLAND (Screams): Aaaah!
JO (ENTERS DOWN RIGHT, running): Oh, my gosh, Lily! Are you all right?
LILY (Points at ROLAND.): It's... it's... it's a ghost!
ROLAND (Points at LILY.): It's... it's... it's a mortal! (The OTHER GHOSTS come out of hiding.)
ORLA: Roland, ye yellow-bellied milksop! Ye ruined our whole plan!
BARNEY: Good job, Roland!
CASSANDRA: You don't take direction very well, do you?
JO: Whoa!
LILY: Mom! I thought you said there's no such thing as ghosts!
JO: That's right! There isn't!
ORLA: Well, what do ye call us then?
JO: Why, you must be a figment of my imagination! A hallucination brought on by a combination of stress and exhaustion! Yes! That's it! I must be so exhausted my mind is playing tricks on me!
CASSANDRA: If I were a figment of your imagination, would I be able to do this? (Waves her arms and laughs ominously.)
JO: I don't know. What are you doing?
CASSANDRA: I'm creating a cold spot to chill your blood and make shivers run up and down your spine!
JO: Nope. Not feeling it.
CASSANDRA (To the OTHER GHOSTS.): See? This is what happens when you don't get to practice your art!
BARNEY: Here, Cassandra. Let me try something.
CASSANDRA (To JO.): Ooh, watch this! This'll frighten the socks right off you!
BARNEY (Knocks one of the housewares off the counter.) There.
JO: Is that it?
BARNEY: What? I'm a poltergeist. This is what I do.
JO: I think it would have been scarier if we couldn't see you.
BARNEY: Well, that's not my fault, is it? I'm not the one who insisted on apparating prematurely... Orla!
I'm thinking this play might be really popular, not just at Halloween but all year long. After all, it's got everything audiences want. Humor. Chills. A creepy mystery. Even a little romance.
But more about that last one later...
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Belmont Diary: Worst Fairy Tale gets a premiere
Not going to lie. I was a little nervous when I emailed my script for The Worst Fairy Tale Ever to Belmont Day School, the school in Massachusetts that commissioned it from me. I really love the play, but it isn't anything like my other plays and I wasn't sure if it's what they were looking for.
It's very self-aware, with the actors often commenting on the fairy tale they're supposed to be performing. Pretty much the entire play is like this. Every character, every line operates on two levels: that of the actors and that of the characters they're playing.
If this sounds confusing, that's because it is. Extremely confusing. And now you know why I was nervous.
I also wasn't sure about some of the gags, which are even quirkier than most of the stuff I write.
I shouldn't have worried. The school had their first readthrough a couple of weeks ago and the theater director raved about it. He said it was a real winner and was so funny when read in the various characters' voices.
Whew!
That's not all. I just got word from South Florence High School in Florence, SC that they've booked the world premiere for November 8 (as I explained in a previous post, Belmont Day School is only using it for in-class instruction). Yay!
How did I find them? Through a fantastic Facebook Group named High School Theatre Directors and Teachers. It's mainly a group for theater teachers to help each other solve productions issues on their shows (and only occasionally to gripe about those annoying helicopter parents).
The group frowns on commercial self-promotion, but on the first day of each month, they allow playwrights to promote their plays. And the most common way to promote them is to pitch the story (briefly, very briefly!) with an offer of a free perusal script to anyone who asks.
I posted my pitch of The Worst Fairy Tale Ever on August 1 and I got a respectable 90 requests for the script. Three weeks later, I was contacted by a senior at South Florence High School in Florence, SC, who wanted use the script for her student directing project. When I told her theater teacher that this meant they'd get world premiere credit in the script if and when it's published, he was thrilled. I was just as thrilled for them.
The school will be sending me a video recording of the production so that I can give the script a final polish based on the response from the audience. I'll then be submitting it to Pioneer Drama Service for their consideration.
But wait. There's more. Just today, the theater director at Shenandoah High School in Shenandoah, IA said she'll be taking the play to the Iowa Speech Contest this winter. I was hoping schools would see this easy-to-produce play (no set! no costumes! many laughs!) as a competition piece, so I consider this a big win.
If you're a theater teacher and you're not a member yet of this amazing Facebook group, I strongly urge you to check it out. And if you're a playwright looking for a powerful way to reach out to high schools, look no further. You've found it.
Oh, and if you'd like to receive your own free perusal copy of The Worst Fairy Tale Ever, just email me at todd.wallinger@gmail.com. Thanks!
Monday, October 14, 2024
Freaky Tiki is now available!
Three has always been my magic number. But this year, five carries a special kind of magic for me. Because that's the number of plays I've released this year--a new record.
Freaky Tiki is that fifth play (and my 29th overall), and it was just released by Pioneer Drama Service. This tropical comedy has a cast of 20 (3M, 12F, and 5 that can be any) and runs about 75 minutes. Here's the synopsis:
The Wobbly Palms Resort prides itself on being the finest two-and-a-half-star resort in Hawaii—and if it hadn't been for that incident in the goat yoga class last year, they'd still have that third star. Unfortunately, the owners are losing money on the place and will be forced to close it for good if they can't find a buyer soon.
There's still hope, however. The staff has just gotten word that a mystery guest will be arriving soon to evaluate the resort for possible purchase by a major hotel chain. All they have to do is make sure nothing goes wrong during the guest's stay. But then a different guest leaves a creepy-looking tiki with the front desk clerk for safekeeping and everything starts to go wrong.
First, the resort's hot-tempered French chef discovers that the lobster that was supposed to be that evening's dinner special has escaped. Then an obsessive young man determined to pull off the world's most elaborate marriage proposal loses the ring in a pond full of hungry piranhas. Next, a temperamental opera singer preparing for her comeback concert loses her voice, forcing her to communicate by clown horn. And finally the resort's perky activities director loses an entire tour group on a hike!
Could the tiki be cursed? If so, how can they counteract the curse? And exactly who is the mystery guest anyway?
Culminating in a crazy chase scene between the butterfly-net-wielding chef and an unusually large lobster, this hilarious comedy proves that sometimes bad luck is simply good luck in disguise.
I've already discussed how I came up with the idea for the play (think The White Lotus meets The Brady Bunch).
The play is particularly easy to produce. It requires only a single hotel lobby set. The costumes are fairly simple, primarily work clothes for the staff (maid, bellhop, chef) and vacation clothes for the guests. There are no special lighting requirements and only one sound effect, which can be easily produced using a crash box.
One fun bit is that the script includes a fair amount of Hawaiian vocabulary. But never fear! The script also includes a glossary with the pronunciation and definition of each of those terms. Your students may even come away from the production learning a little about Hawaiian history and culture.
Want to learn more. You can read a sample of the script and review full ordering info on the play's web page.
A hui hou!
Monday, September 23, 2024
Swiss Meatballs
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Instant Five-Timer
I've spoken before about my Five-Timers club, that elite group of schools and community theaters that have performed five or more of my plays. It usually takes a few years to achieve that lofty status. After all, producing groups generally like to mix things up by performing plays from a variety of playwrights.
So I have to give a big shoutout to Plain Dealing High School (Go Lions!) of Plain Dealing, LA, which became the fifth member of my Five-Timers Club--literally overnight--by booking five different plays of mine yesterday.
The five plays are:
It Happened on Route 66 (my newest blockbuster)
Million Dollar Meatballs (a perennial favorite)
The Butler Did It! (an old classic)
You're Driving Me Crazy! (short and oh so sweet)
The Purrfect Crime (an overlooked charmer)
All five plays are scheduled for this school year, so I'm guessing they may be in-class readings rather than full productions. But they're all officially licensed and paid through Pioneer Drama Service so what the heck. I'll count them.
And no, my Five-Timers Club may not come with a jacket, like Saturday Night Live's version. But it does get you my everlasting gratitude and appreciation.
Thanks, PDHS! And break lots and lots of legs!
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Show Me State Bookshop Helps Abused Kids
Just a quick congratulations to the STARS Foundation of Cabool, MO. According to this article in the West Plains Daily Quill, their recent production of How to Enchant a Bookshop raised over $20,000 for the 37th Judicial Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), a vitally important volunteer group that helps abused and neglected children.
This warms my heart. I hope the money raised will have a positive, life-changing impact on many, many kids in your area.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Free Perusal Script of The Last Radio Show
Two weeks ago, I told you about an incredible offer from Pioneer Drama Service: five full perusal scripts of my plays for the amazing price of zero dollars and zero-zero cents.
Well, this week it's a different play with a different publisher but the same low, low price. Heuer Publishing is offering a free perusal copy of my play The Last Radio Show. All you have to do is visit this web page, then click on Download Free sScript. (Note: If you access the page on your phone, you may need to fill out your name, organization, and email address.)
The Last Radio Show is one of my funniest plays and is a lot of fun because it gives the actors an opportunity to make those old-timey sound effects like using coconut shells for the sound of horse hooves or crumpling cellophane for the sound of a campfire.
The play has a cast of 10 (5M/5F), a single set, and runs 90 minutes. Here's the synopsis:
It's 1948, and KUKU Radio is on trouble. Their broadcast tower keeps falling over. The electric company is about to shut off their power. And now they're losing actors, one by one. Can this ragtag crew keep the show going? Or will they be shut down for good?
This hilarious farce brings back the Golden Age of Radio, with crazy commercials such as Kindling Krunch ("the cereal that's like having your own National Park--in a bowl!), and even crazier shows, like The Thing With Two Spleens and Tex King, The Humming Cowboy.
Don't touch that dial! This is radio like you've never seen it before!
But be sure to download the script soon. The link expires on Monday, September 9.
Friday, August 23, 2024
Free Read Friday
Subscribers to Pioneer Drama Service's newsletter are already familiar with Free Read Fridays. At the end of each week, Pioneer promotes one or more plays from their catalog by providing a link to a free downloadable copy of the complete script.
My plays have appeared on Free Read Friday several times in the past, sometimes on their own, sometimes as part of a themed collection (recent themes have included Children's Musicals and Christmas in July).
It's always exciting to see what plays they offer. But today I'm especially excited because for the first time, Pioneer is devoting the week's theme to a single author's works. And that author happens to be, well, me.
The five plays they selected are tied together in three key ways. They're all 60-80 minutes in length. They're all single-set. And they all feature my unique brand of humor (Pioneer's words, not mine😁).
The five are:
George Washington Ate My Homework
Unfortunately, if you don't already subscribe to the newsletter, it's too late to download these. But I'd still urge to subscribe as soon as possible because the next four Free Read Fridays will also offer five (or more) free perusal scripts.
Pioneer calls it their Five-for-Five, and I think it's a fantastic deal. Where else can you get 25 perusal scripts--a $200 value--for free? The themes they'll be offering are Halloween shows, murder mysteries, fairy tale courtroom comedies, and contest pieces.
And yes, you can unsubscribe at any time. To add your name to the growing list of subscribers, just fill out their form here.
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Kill the Critic! is now available!
I'm thrilled to announce that my 4th play of the year and 28th play overall has just been released by Heuer Publishing. It's called Kill the Critic! and it may be the funniest play I've ever written.
Set in 1955, Kill the Critic! is about Trevor Stanton, an impulsive young actor who kidnaps New York City's most powerful theater critic to prevent him from writing a negative review. There's just one problem. Trevor accidentally poisons the critic, and as showtime nears, he must take increasingly desperate measures to hide the corpse from a parade of outrageous characters.
Saturday, August 3, 2024
Ontario Bookshop Musical makes the grade
Thursday, August 1, 2024
Bringing Down the House is now available!
When Belmont Day School first approached me about writing a large-cast play--no, make that a huge-cast play (we're talking 40 roles!)--I expected it to be tough.
I mean, how do you come up with that many characters? How do you manage them on the stage? And how do you make sure every role is meaningful?
As is turned out, it was tough. But there were two steps I took to simplify things.
Making each role count
The first was to group characters together. I had the six members in the family. I had three ghost hunters. I had five tourists. I had five cheerleaders. And so on and so on. This made it easier to manage the characters because it allowed me to move them around in groups.
The second was to assign different personalities to each character within a group. For the cheerleaders, for example, I had a tough one, a sweet one, a bossy one, a confused one, and a perky one. In each situation they faced, I knew exactly how each of the characters would respond and I knew that each of those responses would be unique to that character.
It worked. The play was, for me, an artistic success, telling the amusing, action-packed, and yet emotionally powerful story of a dysfunctional family becoming, in the end, functional.
But it was a financial success too, as the play (along with its one-act adaptation) garnered 74 productions in its first full year of publication, placing it second on my list of popular plays.
Apparently, a lot of schools are interested in huge-cast plays. And it makes sense. After all, it allows them to involve a lot more actors in their program, including kids that may not have performed before but are eager to trod the boards with a small but laugh-worthy role.
An odd request
Well, now my second huge-cast play is out, and I have even higher hopes for it. This one is titled Bringing Down the House and it has an only slightly smaller cast of 38 (7M, 5F, plus 26 roles that can be any and extras). The play is about a struggling theater company that's forced to throw together a show in just two hours when they learn that the theater they rented is about to get demolished.
Sound crazy? It is. But there's an added twist that makes this one irresistible. Belmont Day School requested that it be a musical without songs.
What's that you say? How is that even possible? Well, the idea they came up with is that during the rehearsal, the various performers would prepare to burst into song, but each time they do, they get interrupted before they can even sing one note.
I loved it. And that's what led me to the concept of the theater being demolished in the first place. I mean, how can you even rehearse a musical when you have to deal with an endless array of intruders, from an annoying child actor to a publicity-hungry politician, and from a group of confused protestors to the bumbling demo crew itself?
The play is wild. It's fun. It's hilarious. And--big surprise!--it's easy to produce.
Keeping things simple
Since the play is a backstage comedy, you can use your own bare stage as the set, adding only a few minor items like a table, chair, and two building columns.
The props are fairly minimal as well, although there are two swordfights--one with stage swords and one with sledgehammers and protest signs (trust me, it makes sense)--so you'll have to prepare for that.
As for the costumes, those are almost entirely street clothes, with a few hard hats and professional outfits thrown in for good measure.
Okay, enough jabbering. You want to read the full synopsis, don't you? Well, you can find that on the play's web page, along with a free script sample and ordering info.
Hopefully, you'll have a lot more than two hours to rehearse this show.