Writing a play is easy.
Pick any verbal exchange with your parents: either your favorite conversation ever, or your worst fight in history.
Record everything about it in writing, including where it happened, when it happened, who wore what, and, last but not least, who said what.
Done… almost.
Writing a good play is hard.
It has to mean something to at least one person in addition to its writer, or else it will never attract a producer, a director, a cast, or anyone else who might wish to give it life.
It has to impact its readers enough to burn its characters, its challenges, its questions, its theories into their minds--at least for a little while. It has to be memorable. It has to be thought-provoking. It has to be different… but not too different.
It has to hit the Goldilocks ‘sweet-spot’, although the Goldilocks could be anyone…
Like I said. HARD.
At WPI, our Goldilocks is New Voices, “the nation's longest continuously running collegiate new and original play festival” (http://users.wpi.edu/~theatre/new-voices/index.cgi?page=whatis). She likes her plays to be a little everything: neither too long, nor too short, somewhere between 1 and 20 pages to be precise; comedic or tragic, at least somewhat dramatic; complex in some ways, simple in others, captivating in all. She accepts monologues and musicals, one act plays and multi-act plays. She welcomes dramas and melodramas, tragic comedies, comic tragedies, hilarious comedies, horrific tragedies, and horrors. She discourages porn, though nudity, where appropriate, is permitted. Her aim is entertainment--student-written entertainment--so almost anything goes!
Like I said. A LITTLE EVERYTHING.
If you are planning to submit a play to New Voices 35, then here is what you need to know:
Submissions are welcomed at any time, beginning January 9th, 2017.
The deadline for submissions is January 27th at 5:00 p.m.
Submissions must be delivered electronically in PDF format.
Submission should be emailed to nv-submissions@wpi.edu.
(These guidelines and other details are provided at http://users.wpi.edu/~theatre/new-voices/index.cgi?page=submission)
So… Where does one begin? How does one become inspired to write a really good play?
I usually start with a conversation idea--a question with no exact answer, or a statement with a million meanings.
Then I figure out who is speaking: who asked the question? to whom? what do these people look like? where did they come from? where are they now? where are they going?
Then I ask, what happened right before this? what happens next?
Sometimes I just start writing conversations, and if I like one, then I try to make something with it. Other times, I ask a bunch of weird "what-if" questions. If I come up with a crazy enough answer to one, then I have a plot!
The best advice I can give you is write what you know: choose a topic that means a lot to you, and create conversations around it; choose a place that you love, and make something happen there. Write to ask questions you would otherwise hold back and to find answers you could never get from someone else.
Then edit.
Happy writing!
