Hi folks
14 days, 14 challenges, two weeks into the challenge!
You folks are crushing it!
Keep those random bits of plays coming.
Let’s gather some raw material that we can keep playing around with beyond November to get us through the rest of the winter into spring again, what do you say?
Onward to today’s writing prompt…
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Challenge #14 - The Worst Play You Can Possibly Imagine
Due: Wednesday, November 15th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)
Here’s a fun one. You can completely relax because you don’t have to write anything good today. No pressure to perform. Follow all your worst instincts.
Literary Associate Kate Cosgrove provides the following prompt:
“Intentionally write the worst play you can possibly imagine.”
Red Theater once did a variation on this kind of prompt and I just remember being enormously relieved because I could just fart around for a day, come up with the most melodramatic, crap, terrible soap opera dialogue and plotting I could envision.
All the plays or TV shows or books or movies that were so unintentionally bad that I couldn’t restrain myself from laughing at, or making up alternative dialogue for. I could write one of those and have fun doing it.
There was a plotline on an old soap opera I used to watch once that really went off the rails, but they thought they were being edgy or progressive somehow but it was actually laughably inept. It prompted me to sum it up with fabricated dialogue that was never spoken but would have been a relief - “I am your husband’s gay lover!” I imagined a character saying it every time he walked into a room and found the clueless wife there, too.
On another daytime drama, a woman’s ex-husband couldn’t allow her to find happiness with another man and so he went to really extreme lengths to try to keep them apart. He shot the new groom on their wedding day with a sniper rifle on a nearby building, but the bullet didn’t kill the guy. So the ex visited the groom in the hospital and smothered the guy with a pillow, but the medical staff were able to revive him. They put the groom in police protection and hid him away on a houseboat, but the ex found out about it and blew up the boat. He was sure he got the new groom this time. He took his ex-wife hostage and started waving a gun around. But who should show up alive and well to save the day but the new groom.
When the groom stepped into view in the hostage situation, the ex really lost it. He pointed the gun at his rival and screamed what is still my favorite line of bad dialogue:
“Stay back! Stay back! I killed you once! Twice! I’ll kill you again!”
Bad exposition is fun, too.
I know I’m in for a rough ride reading a new play if there are epic character descriptions at the front of the script, or things in the stage directions that have nothing to do with visual cues but are instead things that the audience will not have the benefit of because the information appears in stage directions in a script they’ll never be able to read and is also information that is never communicated through the characters and how they interact - Greg appears, he is Sarah’s brother. He has a job he hates and… - this is before anyone says a line of dialogue and when they do, you wouldn’t know any of this stuff from the way they present themselves.
In fact, what if a play were nothing but bad stage directions that contain information that should instead be revealed in dialogue, or what if what the characters say directly contradicts everything you read in the stage directions?
One of my writing teachers liked to share his favorite example of bad exposition that both characters know and so there’s no reason for them to say it to one another except for the audience’s benefit because the playwright is desperately and awkwardly trying to get the information out:
“As you know, Betty, we’ve been happily married to each other for ten years.”
This is the kind of thing a writer friend of mine calls “As you know, Bob…” dialogue.
Feel free to write a whole play of “As you know, Bob…” dialogue.
Or skewer a piece of art you think is too pretentious for its own good and needs to be taken down a peg through satire.
Play around with that any or all of that.
Or don’t.
Write the best play you can possibly imagine instead, if you want.
Up to you.
Just write something.
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If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can try 2021’s challenge #14:
Magic
Or try 2022’s challenge #14:
Snowflakes and Other Totems
Or,
you know, just ignore the prompts altogether and write whatever you
want - as long as you’re writing and turning it in by the deadline,
that’s all that matters for the challenge :)
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Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)
Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play
Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt
No. Really. I Mean It. Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt
Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)
Don’t Stress About Thanksgiving
Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”
Don't Stress About What You're Turning In Each Day
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How to submit your work for Challenge #14
You have options. They are:
Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and send as an attachment to an email sent to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
OR
Copy and paste your script in the body of an email and send it to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
OR
Post
your script online (as a Google doc, or in a blog post, on your own
personal website, etc.) - email a link to this script to
ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
(If you’re going to Google doc
route, just make sure to have the document public, or give permissions
to our email address to open it)
When emailing us, make the subject line of your email - Challenge #14
(That just helps us sort through the email more quickly)
(Or, you know, just reply to this email if you want :)
OR
Post the link for the online document option above in the comments
section on this very blog post for this very challenge on the writing
challenge blog below
Again, this is: Due: Wednesday, November 15th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)
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And,
just to reassure you, no, we are not going to be sticklers about you
following these directions down to the minutest detail - the important
thing is that you write, and then that you share it with us, so we can
keep track of who’s writing every day.
Also, no, there is no
penalty for finishing and submitting early - but it also isn’t a race,
so give yourself all the time up til 12 noon Central Time on Wednesday to
write if you need it. When you’re done, you’re done.
Again,
remember, it doesn’t need to be great, it doesn’t even need to be
responding to this prompt (the prompt is just there so you’re not
staring at a blank screen to start with no idea what to write about :)
Doesn't
even need to be complete - you could have the beginning or the middle
or the end of an idea, maybe two out of three but not all, that's still
fine. This is all about getting things started, you can write more
later. You have 16 more days to build on whatever you come up with
today, if you want. Just get anything on the page, even if won't make
sense to anyone else, as long as it make sense to you.
It just needs to be something.
**************************************
And that something can be:
Lights up.
A man holds a woman hostage, waving a gun around.
Another man enters to save the day.
The guy with the gun shouts: “Stay back! Stay back! I killed you once! Twice! I’ll kill you again!”
Lights down.
The End
That’s always your escape hatch, every day.
That’s your base line.
Build on it.
Have fun.
Don’t stress.
Make an impulsive decision and run with it.
Breathe.
You’ve got the day.
Just write.
Matthew A. Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(he/him/his)
Now Playing:
The video trailer for Threshold Theater's first virtual
play reading in the New Play Reading series (back in May/June 2021), our
reading of “Spellbound”
by Matthew A. Everett - Thanks to his mischievous friend Jeffrey, who’s
begun dabbling in witchcraft, Micah has accidentally dosed his best
friend Auggie with a love potion. Which might be fine, if Auggie wasn’t
straight, and married, or if Auggie’s wife Sarah wasn’t pregnant, or a
practicing witch. With the help of Duncan, who runs the local
metaphysical supply store, the race is on to whip up the antidote before
anyone does something they’ll regret. Now on our YouTube channel
Support Threshold Theater on Give to the Max Day, November 16th
(Or feel free to give early, any time between November 1st through 15th)
Here's the link: https://www.givemn.org/story/Kssucf
Coming Monday, November 20, 2023 at 7pm:
If you’re local in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, come and join us for Threshold Theater's
seventh live play reading in the New Play Reading series. Like all good
LGBTQ+ theater companies, we begin our new season of programming with
"Mediocre Heterosexual Sex" - which is a play by Madison Wetzell.
Location: The Black Hart of Saint Paul
- 1415 University Avenue West, St. Paul, MN - Doors at 6:30pm, Reading
begins at 7pm, Audience discussion to follow the reading -
About the
play: Four hours after her girlfriend dumps her, Erin switches her
Tinder setting to dudes because she hates herself. She quickly meets
Aaron, who is straight, conveniently nearby, and only too happy to
indulge her masochistic fantasies. To translate this deeply ambivalent
first hetero experience, Erin seeks the advice of the only straight
people she knows, a couple in a Dominant/submissive relationship. A
vexed exploration of gender, sex, power, and kink.
Coming Spring 2024:
“4Play with Threshold Theater”
Dates and venue still TBA
Featuring:
Amsterdam, by Collette Cullen
Bluetooth, by Liz Dooley
Hurry Up and Wail, by Anna Ralls
Just for Context, by Bethany Dickens Assaf
The Weird Ellen Prom Queen Trendsetters, by Elizabeth Shannon
Coming for Pride Month 2024
Monday, June 3, 2024
Monster Girls at Sunshine Donuts, by Dani Herd
A
vampire, a werewolf, and a Frankenstein's monster walk into a doughnut
shop... Meet Louise, Tally, and Elsie: the crew behind Sunshine
Doughnuts! The ghouls have fallen into a pretty pleasant spooky routine
for themselves; pouring coffee, baking doughnuts, arguing over
Scooby-Doo cartoons, having crushes on their regulars. Along comes an
unexpected late night visitor to throw everything into question.
Sometimes it really sucks how much your past can come back to bite you!
"Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say."
- James Baldwin
"Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way."
- E.L. Doctorow
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