Writing Challenge #17 - Period Piece (Write Nov. 17th)

Hi folks

You are a very prolific crew!

Initial numbers on the work turned in for Challenge 14 look like this:
79 playwrights, with material totaling 244 pages
(Or the equivalent of two full-length plays)

Initial statistics on week 2 look like this
Average number of playwrights submitting any given day in week two was 80
Total number of pages for week two was 1,913

The first two weeks of the challenge total up as follows:
Average daily number of playwrights across the first two weeks is 85
A total of 1,193 different submissions, totaling 4, 043 pages
(Or the equivalent of 33 full-length plays, plus another long one-act of 83 pages)

Phew!

Keep up the good work!

Happy writing to you as we sail into week three!

So without further delay, let’s get you that writing prompt…

************************

Challenge #17 - Period Piece

Write Monday, November 17th - or earlier if you like
Due: Tuesday, November 18th, 12pm noon Central Time 
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)


The suggestion list from Threshold Theater Literary Associate Maren Findlay is on fire this year, just full of fun topics to riff on.  Today we have the following

"Write something set during your favorite historical era (the Gold Rush, Salem witch trials etc)"

The most sprawling example that leaps to my mind is August Wilson’s Century Cycle (or Pittsburgh Cycle), ten plays written between 1982 and 2005, each one taking place in a different decade of the 20th century.

Gem of the Ocean (set in 1904)
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (set in 1917)
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (set in 1927)
The Piano Lesson (set in 1936) (Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama in 1990)
Seven Guitars (set in 1948)
Fences (set in 1957) (Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama in 1987)
Two Trains Running (set in 1969)
Jitney (set in 1977)
King Hedley II (set in 1985)
Radio Golf (set in 1997)


Lauren Gunderson in many of her plays takes a historical figure she finds fascinating (often female figures in science) and creates a play around them:

Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight (set in the 1700s)
The Revolutionists (set during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror)
Ada and the Engine (set in the 1830s)
Silent Sky (set in the late 1800s/early 1900s)
The Half-Life of Marie Curie (set in the 1910s)
Earthrise (set in 1969 around the moon landing)



The late playwright Robert Patrick wrote a series of seven one-act plays across the decades from the 1920s to 1980s chronicling snapshots of gay life in “Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance”



You can also take history more personally.  For instance, my grandmother lived to be 100, from the 1910s to the 2010s.  That’s a lot of history to cover.  My mother lived from the 1930s to the 2010s.  I was born in the 1960s and I’m still kicking around in the 2020s.

Back in 2002, I was asked to team up with a composer friend Rob Hartmann when he was commissioned to write a six person, one set, musical that had something to do with Christmas.  Somehow, I convinced him it would be fun to have those six people play eighteen characters in four interwoven stories that took place across four generations of an American family, all set in the same living room in the days preceding Christmas in 1921, 1951, 1971, and 1998.  We called it “The Hopes and Fears of All The Years.”  (I can’t do anything the easy way, apparently.)


Fictional characters set in other moments in human history.
Historical figures brought to life on stage.
Mining your own personal history, or the periods of time you and your family lived through.
Create your own period piece.

If any of those amuse or intrigue you, or make you think of some other concept that you want to play around with, go forth and write something.

Or, as usual, ignore all this and just do whatever you want.

Just write something.

************************

If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can 

try 2021’s challenge #17: Holidays

Or try 2022’s challenge #17: Writing For Someone Else

Or try 2023’s Challenge #17: Occam’s Raisin

Or try 2024’s challenge #17: The Gilded Lily

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 :)

*************************

How to submit your work for Challenge #17

We’re streamlining the process this year with a Google form, 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdy-wyjz-IITaNsOkXM1zVQu_yrt_o7E4Vp2eQnr-8VNnu49w/viewform?usp=header

but you still have multiple options for how you submit your playwriting output for the day.

After you enter the required fields of 
email, 
name, 
challenge number (for today, that’d be 17 :) 
and page count, 
you can submit your writing in one of four ways:

Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and upload that document to the Google form.

OR

Post your script online (on your personal website, as a blog post, or as a Google doc) and put a link to that online script in the Google form.

OR

Copy/paste your work from another source directly into the Google form

OR

Type directly into the Google form.

(Whichever option you choose, you can leave the other ones blank.)



Write Monday, November 17th - or earlier if you like
Again, this is: Due: Tuesday, November 18th, 12pm noon Central Time 
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)

**********************

And because we call can get in our own way so easily, here’s some words of reassurance on the basics of this month:

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 Format

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 “Succeeding” or “Failing”

Don’t Stress About What You’re Turning In Each Day

Don’t Stress about November 27th (however you recognize the holiday weekend) - 2025 edition

***************************

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 Tuesday 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 13 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 makes sense to you.

It just needs to be something.

***************************

And that something can be:


Lights up.

A woman missing her late husband stands by the family Christmas tree, looking at the lights on the branches, and the ornaments from different generations of the family.

Her college age son hovers in the shadows just outside her view.

The spirit of her grandmother appears in the shadows nearby.

The spirit of her mother appears in the shadows nearby.

The spirit of her brother’s best friend who she had a crush on as a girl appears in the shadow nearby.

The spirit of her dead husband, wishing he could comfort his wife and son, appears in the shadows nearby.

The woman stands, surrounded by spirits and memories of family and friends, past and present.

The lights fade to black.

The lights on the tree wink out.

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.

And take good care of yourselves, and each other.

Matthew A. Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(he/him/his)