I finished my latest commission for Belmont Day School today. And it was a bear. A real bear.
Not because it was long. As I mentioned before, it's only half an hour. And not because it required a huge cast. The school specified a cast of eight.
No, what made it a bear is that it has to be a fairy tale.
Not that I have anything fairy tale plays. In fact, I've written two of them.
Rumpelstiltskin, Private Eye came out in 2014 and that's been a perennial favorite of both schools and community theaters ever since.
Wicked Is As Wicked Does came out in 2017 and has not done nearly as well, but I still really love that play. I think it's got some great gags--especially if you like fairy tale-ish puns--and it teaches a great lesson about tolerance and giving people a second chance.
Still, after two of these kinds of plays, I felt kind of tapped out. So when Belmont Day School asked me to write yet another one I was stumped. What would it be about?
An additional challenge was that, according to the contract, the play had to steer clear of all gender, ethnic, and racial stereotypes. So that eliminated any possibility of including a damsel in distress.
Now the obvious spin on this is to make the princess the hero: wielding a sword, fighting dragons, maybe even wooing the prince. But there are a ton of plays like that. In fact, Pioneer Drama Service publishes quite a few.
No, I wanted something original.
So I brainstormed ideas. Most were bad. Very, very bad. But a few were good. Or at least they were good enough to justify starting on the script.
How to Survive a Fairy Tale saw famous villains (the Three Little Pigs' wolf, Hansel and Gretel's witch) lecturing the audience on how to avoid ending up in a pot of boiling water. Or a burning oven. Or some other uncomfortably toasty place.
I liked the idea, but the same thing happened to me every time I've tried to write one of these episodic plays. I lost steam several pages in, with no idea where to take the story. I need a full-blown plot, characters with a compelling goal, and a classic three-act structure. Not skits.
Cinderella in Hollywood featured a couple of aspiring screenwriters pitching the story of Cinderella to two cynical producers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. As the The famous characters from the story would then come to life to act out the story as it's being told.
This also seemed to have potential, allowing me to skewer both the silliness that is the story of Cinderella as well as Hollywood itself. Unfortunately, I couldn't get away from those stereotypes. They're baked into the original fairy tale.
How about switching the fairy tale they pitch to Snow White? Or Sleeping Beauty? Or Beauty and the Beast? Nope, nope, and nope. All those are rife with stereotypes too.
Finally, I hit upon the idea of making a fairy tale version of The Play That Goes Wrong. I haven't seen the play yet, but I've watched scenes online and I found them to be brilliant. Hilarious too, of course, but what really struck me about the play was how brilliantly the script exploited each mishap for maximum laughs.
So I threw together eight actors rehearsing a brand new fairy tale titled The Greatest Fairy Tale of All Time. Or at least they thought they were rehearsing it. Turns out they were expected to perform it. Like right then. For a full audience. Unfortunately, there was no set, the costumes hadn't arrived yet, and none of the actors had learned their parts.
No problem, the narrator says. I'll read from the script. The rest of you just follow my lead. Which would be fine if these were professional actors. But they're not. They're high school students, with all the quirks and quibbles of high school students everywhere.
The King questions everything. The Page wants a bigger part. The Dragon has stage fright. And the Princess improvises a big dramatic death scene so she can get into a good theater school.
Once I had the idea, the script came together in about three weeks, which is pretty fast even for a one-act play. And the format allowed me to go wild with it, playing with theater conventions and story structure in a way I'd never felt free enough to do before.
All that was left was a title. And I had the perfect one already thunk out: The Fairy Tale That Goes Wrong?
Stupid me. As it turns out, Mischief Theatre, the folks behind The Play That Goes Wrong, have already trademarked the title.
I thought maybe I could get away with changing one word, but I ran this idea past my publisher to be sure. She pointed out that not only do they have The Play That Goes Wrong but A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and something on BBC called The Goes Wrong Show. So clearly it's the "Goes Wrong" phrase that they want to protect.
What else? Well, I thought I might "play" on the title of the play-within-the-play by calling the whole thing The Worst Fairy Tale Ever. But that's too good, right? Too generic.
Nope. I was surprised to find that there has never been a play, a movie, a book, or even a fairy titled The Worst Fairy Tale ever. (Okay, there's one YouTube video, but that doesn't count.)
I'm taking it.
So I've got my script. I've got my title. What else do I need? Oh, yes. Someone to produce it. As I mentioned in that earlier post, Belmont Day School is only using the script for in-class instruction, so I'm free to offer the world premiere to someone else. All I have to do is find them. Guess it's time to hit the road (virtually speaking).
If you're a theater director and you're interested in receiving a free perusal copy of the script, just email me at todd.wallinger@gmail.com. I think you'll like it.
And if anyone wants my rejected story ideas, you can have them. I'm done writing fairy tale plays!
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