I got an email yesterday outlining an interesting approach to short play production that’s completely new to me and probably to you as well.
It seems The Improvised Puppet Project is looking for playwrights to write the first 2-4 pages of a full-length play in any genre (comedy, drama, tragedy, tragicomedy, absurdist, postmodern existentialist feminism, etc.), but then stop right there. Just give them the most brilliant beginning to a play imaginable, and they’ll do the rest. This is for a show called Act One, Scene Two, which will be part of Portland Stage Company’s Studio Rep 2014.
Here’s how it works:
For the show, The Improvised Puppet Project will perform a cold staged reading of those first 2-4 pages and then improvise the rest of the full-length play (meaning about 90 minutes). A very ambitious improv session to say the least.
The Twist:
They don’t want to improvise it the way they would have written it; rather they want to improvise it the way I would have written it if I’d written the whole thing. In order to honor the playwright’s style, and give both the actors and the audience some context about the writer and the piece, they want to interview selected playwrights onstage before the show (or on film in advance if he/she absolutely cannot make it) to find out about why they write plays, what their other plays are about, what makes them and their plays tick.
Cast/Characters:
Keep the scripted part of your play to 2-3 characters (though you can refer to as many others as you want, to be introduced later).
Production:
While The Improvised Puppet Project performs our shows without elaborate set-pieces, costumes, or props, they’d like you to conceive of the piece as you normally would, as a script to be performed by a theater company. Things can be left open, or you can feel free to specify a style, genre, setting, etc. They can suggest or endow those things in other ways. The only limit is the audience’s imagination.
Initial submission deadline is October 31, 2013. The show will run in January 2014, in repertory with two other brand new (scripted) plays. Act One, Scene Two will be performed seven times, each with a different, original script.
Submissions:
Please send the following to improvisedpuppetproject@gmail.com with “submission” in the subject:
My Approach:
This is a very cool idea and one i would definitely use if I was still in the classroom. Good luck!
Your style is very unique compared to other folks I have read stuff from. I appreciate you for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I will just book mark this web site.