Only 3 plays left! Gosh, where does a month go…

Today’s brief was to write a play all about the Jewish festival of Purim. Now it could be because I’ve done a lot of writing this month and the Theatre of Cruelty is still lingering in absurdum in my brain but I went a bit surreal and nuts for this one…

“That’s a Lot!”

A (very) surreal comedy where Lot time travels and turns up in Susa doing aerial silk skills on a giant pillar of salt in between a fight between two fashion houses – House of Esther and House of Vashti where they both launch the same outfit called the ‘law suit’ and then proceed to have a ‘law suit’ over it until someone comes up with the genus idea of ‘casting lots’ instead. Frivolity ensues until Esther and Vashti sort everyone out with sensible compromises. If only the Bible had more women in it…

“Oo, what’s that?… That’s a Lot!”

Utter, utter nonsense! 🙂

Titles. Les Tit. Let Sit.

Today’s challenge was to think of a title and write a play based on it. Or think of a play and have fun re-imagining it with a title.

I decided to open the nearest book to hand – “The Open Road” by E.V. Lucas as it happened – and the first page and first poem I came to was “If I Were King”. So I took that as my title and free-styled the rest just to see where the inspiration took me.

“If I Were King”

Turns out I may or may not be in a mental asylum where a young woman who may or may not be Emily Bronte was re-living through a nightmare governess situation and writing to her sister Anne. Can Emily take control of herself before the encroaching sounds of the modern world overwhelm her…?

Really enjoyable write this one 🙂

Interesting brief today as rather than write an entire play we were asked to write a Long Form Improvised Script. And preferably to make it full length. Out of this came a 90 romp through a romantic comedy (to cheer myself up after yesterday’s heavy going apocalyptic shits…) called:

“Kitty Seeks Love”

Kitty is a determined young farmer who’s fed up of useless dates and online dating. She decides to hang a sign over a motorway saying “Kitty Seeks Love” and trial any applying suitors on her sheep farm using 4 carefully manufactured obstacle courses. Helped by her apprentice labourer she tries to find what she thinks is her ideal mate… Unsurprisingly – it doesn’t quite all go as planned!

Arnaud and the Theatre of Cruelty was today’s brief. So a bit of research was definitely required for this one.

“Six Shits”.

In the space between Earth (a giant toilet) and hell (a roller-disco), Six Shits representing various natures of humanity gradually descend filling hell.

Shit One: Faecal embodiment of pre-historic man

Shit Two: Faecal embodiment of pre-historic woman

Shit Three: Faecal embodiment of civilisation

Shit Four: Faecal embodiment of art and literature

Shit Five: Faecal embodiment of industry and finance

Shit Six: Faecal embodiment of science and technology

As Shit Six joins the disco a tsunami kills everyone. The next day the head of a rag doll transforms into a tree as the sun rises over the piled carcasses.

This was a short and interesting brief: A and B in a room. A has a gun to B’s head and B has two minutes to get A to change their mind.

I mused for a while on the concept here of who A and B could be and their relationship to each other – comedy, serious, thriller? Was it a potato gun…?

Came down to: “When Gran Met Hitler”

An ‘everyone’s-Gran-type’ elderly lady suddenly appears in Hitler’s Office in 1938 with a gun in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other and a ticking egg timer counting down 2 minutes in her pocket. Will she pull the trigger – and what will Hitler say to try and stop her – before the timer goes off…?

Might make “When Gran Met ‘X Evil Character From History'” into a series actually… interesting concept. If only more Gran’s had been in positions of power…!

Today’s brief was to write a play that featured non-gendered characters.

I took to the online world for inspiration and created: “Co. De”.

All the codes on the internet – C, C++, Go, Swift, Python et al – have formed a pop group, led by inept management (O and 1). They are trying to practise but it all goes wrong and then Python leaks it to the humans (cos Python’s way too accessible) and they all give up.

Frothy nonsense of a story – tons and tons of fun to write!

This was a challenge. So many rules to follow – each line had to be a certain count, each scene a certain multiple of 8 lines, a set number of characters and locations and things they had to do…

First thing to do was to write up a table listing and cross referencing everything and then from that came:

“Disconnect”

A play about two ‘vertical’ couples (one very rich and unhappy, the other poor and happy) over a weekend where their internet cuts out and they are forced to play boardgames and face truths about their respective relationships.

Lots of random, quite surreal engagements between these two extremely different couples – one of which has a student lodger who snorts a lot and the other a sister who has just broken off an affair with her sisters’ husband.

Complex, but satisfying!

Today was another memory test! We were asked to re-write a play, but this time a play that we knew and loved and crucially to have some fun with the whole thing.

Fun was had! I decided to base my script on Timon of Athens but make it for kids. I typed ‘Timon’ and ‘Athens’ into an anagram creator and it threw out ‘Heaton’s Mint’ as a possible option. So… I googled that and found out about Ralph Heaton and the creation of Heaton’s Mint, which went on to become Birmingham Mint and one of the most prolific private mints in the world.

This all seemed far too good to be true so the story grew with Ralph as Timon and a parallel story about him loving mint humbugs… What larks!

Today we were told to re-write a play we had previously written without looking at it. Clearly we’re being memory tested this week! I chose a play called “Probably Best Not to Flush” and called it:

“Probably Best Not to Flush (…Again)”.

Originally wrote this soon after the Westminster Bridge attacks in London in 2017 whilst sat in a coffee shop in Croydon. Wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this or not really – never tried anything like it before. But found I really enjoyed revisiting these characters – still found a fun relationship between them. Definitely changed dialogue and the specifics but broad brush strokes were really very similar which was interesting…

Story is a white, very ‘British’ man in a toilet in a London hotel trying to avoid his retirement party from the civil service. Suddenly there’s banging and panic outside – a young Bangladeshi woman comes into the toilet in a panic and locks the door saying there’s a terror alert. As bangs and footsteps torment them outside the door they bond over chocolate brownies from Borough Market and the fact that actually he was born in Dhaka and she from Haringey. And that he secretly pretends to the straight and she secretly pretends to her English boyfriend she’s not also engaged to some guy her family have selected in Pakistan. As the bangs start to sound suspiciously like fireworks they both realise they’ve made a silly mistake. Some guy knocks on the door to tell them to hurry up and Laboni leaves laughing and tells him… “Probably Best Not to Flush”…

This was a long day. The brief today was to write a script based on memory – incorporating something you knew as a child but forgot – then delete it and write it again from memory.

I plotted this out first thing in the morning on a walk and was feeling smug, but lots of bits of work came up so didn’t finish the first write til too far into the day and then ended up having to do the second write until after a live stream service finished in the evening. So not entirely happy with the quality of the writing for the second time! But – this is the game so…

Concept time: had a lot of fun working it out. Would like to return to this one…

“MEM House”

In a parallel universe called Dictionary Land all the words live in a giant public school which due to the ever increasing effects of over-crowding, specially after 2020 and all the extra covid words, are facing a DOTI: a Disposition of the Irrelevant Words.

Set in MEM House. All the MEM words are told at an assembly led by the headmaster, Dr Johnson, that they need to work extra hard to stay relevant and in people’s memories. The prefect of MEM House, Memory, and all the cool kids – Meme, Memo, Membrane – are bullish. They’ll be fine. In fact, Meme, since the dawn of the internet got ‘multi-definitional status’ – just like Lockdown recently got from LOC House – which is the ultimate goal for word relevance. Meme’s been utterly unbearable ever since. In fact, he’s started bullying other words – particularly Memorandum, who is very sensitive since his old derivative, Memo, has been granted single-word status. Memorandum thinks he soon will be considered a Lower House word.

The Lower Words of MEM House – Memsahib, Mem, Membrum Virile, Memphian and Memnon are worried. They all think they’re about to get cut. They decide to set up a tribute band to Elvis (Memphian is OBSESSED – even though the other words constantly remind him he’s not multi-definitional because he only relates to ancient Egypt) but re-write the words to sing about their relevance to prove to Dr Johnson and the teachers they shouldn’t get cut.

(Incidentally this is the bit that picks up from my childhood – I set up a tribute band to the Spice Girls with alternate lyrics called the ‘Mice Girls’ in school…. yes, I am THAT cool.)

At the assembly the next day the big launch of the tribute band arrives. Memsahib goes to sing her line… and forgets her words! She’s devastated. But at that moment, she sees Meme bullying Memorandum who gets upset. Memsahib jumps off the stage to give Memorandum a hug. Memo says, “That’s so Memsahib”. At that point a golden bell goes off as Memsahib has just achieved the longed for ‘multi-definitional’ status! She has saved MEM House and the DOTI moves off to the next house.