The Henley Rose Playwright Competition for Women was founded by Yellow Rose
Productions, with permission of Beth Henley, to encourage and recognize the new
works of female playwrights. The Henley Rose Playwright Competition for Women
aims to give voice to the stories of this generation and to bring into the
spotlight important works that have been crafted.
***
Theatre Viscera: We accept plays written by queer (LGBTQIA+) playwrights, about
queer characters, for queer performers. We have a preference for plays about/by
transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folx. You may send us full
length plays, one acts, or collections of ten minutes. Total submissions must
be at least 30 minutes long when read.
***
In November 2022, we will host the 4th Annual Faces of America Monologue
Festival.
To submit your monologue for consideration there are just a few simple rules:
Your monologue must be less than two minutes in length.
We can't stress this enough. If we think your monologue is longer it will not
be considered.
Your
monologue should represent America's incredible diversity. (BIPOC, AAPI,
Latine, and LGBTQIA+ artists are all strongly encouraged to apply). Monologues
can be historical or futuristic, cultural or political, comedic or tragic,
spoken or signed!
Include the word "kindness" somewhere in your monologue.
If this word does not appear in the monologue it will not be considered.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** FIVE ACT PLAY | STRUCTURE ***
Think of the play like a journey; your characters are the travellers, your plot
is what happens along the way and your structure is the road. You could write
an infinite number of stories which take place along a similar road.
Because the five act structure is so versatile, it’s also a useful tool when
analysing the works of others. Almost every film produced by Hollywood follows
a predetermined structure, to the point where you can often predict how a film
will end. Don’t think of this as a prescriptive or limiting template though,
absolutely anything can happen within the confines of the structure. It’s
really a way of making sure you hit a series of plot developments which, if
used correctly, can add depth to your characters and story.
I’m still getting my head around this structure stuff myself, and there are so
many different versions and theories behind it that it can get very confusing.
For the purposes of an example I’ll try to stick to a very simplistic version.
Forgive me if your knowledge is already beyond this point.
I’m using the film The Matrix* as an example to illustrate each point, mainly
because I re-watched it fairly recently and can remember (fairly accurately)
how the plot unfolds. If you haven’t seen the film this will be a good excuse
to check it out. (*Spoiler alert – plot points revealed below.)
Act I – Exposition
This act is essentially where you set up the story; we meet your protagonist
and other major characters, we see their normal situation and see that
something needs to change. The protagonist needs to learn something about
themselves or their situation in order to resolve a problem. The protagonist is
given an opportunity to see outside their normal world at some point during
this act, which they need to take (or there will be no story…)
More...
https://londonplaywrightsblog.com/pursued-by-a-bear-i-cant-make-sense-of-five-act-structure/
***
From Renaissance to Neoclassical this was the standard. Theatre at this time
was based on Aristotle's and Horace's works (as they were understood at the
time) since Classical theatre was considered ideal. The five act structure was
incredibly strict (especially in the Neoclassical period), it wasn't until
Romanticism and Melodrama that this structure fell out of fashion. Few modern
productions have a full-length intermission between every act (though they may
give a couple minutes to stretch while the scenery is changed), although this
wouldn't have been done at the time either. The older five act plays tend to be
fairly long, and are often somewhat abridged in modern performances.
Now might be a good time to discuss scenes: The modern convention, and also
that used by a lot of older writers, is that a scene change is only marked when
there's a change in location, or the time frame moves forwards a significant
amount. However, particularly around 1700, during the period known as the
Restoration, you get plays such as William Congreve's five-act The Way of the
World, where each act takes place in a single location, but every time a
character joins or leaves a conversation, a new scene is declared and numbered.
This can be very, very confusing if you're used to the more standard model.
This is referred to nowadays as "French Scenes."
More...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurActsAreDifferent
***
The five acts consist of the following, which I have paired with how each act
perfectly corresponds to each of Breaking Bad’s five seasons:
Act 1: Something happens to spark the story into motion, and the characters
begin making choices that will set everything else spinning along. (In Breaking
Bad season one, Walter begins cooking meth and realizes he kind of likes it.)
Act 2: The characters still have a chance to escape their fates, but something
in their psyches keeps driving them forward. (In Breaking Bad season two,
Walter delves deeper and deeper into the Albuquerque underworld, meeting
figures like Saul Goodman and Gus Fring for the first time. The season ends
with a “warning from God,” in the form of a plane crash.)
More...
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/20/16910760/breaking-bad-10th-anniversary-birthday-structure
***
The three act structure is the most famous in the last 50 years because of
screenplay greats like Syd Field who taught that it was the golden mean of
simplicity for the writer needing guidance. I've tried this system. I think it
doesn't work. It tries to be too simple and leaves an enormous part of the
story unmarked as "act two". Act two is then propped up and given a
"midpoint climax" as well as a dramatically different character from
part one to part two. I think there's a better way. It's the way Shakespeare
broke up Hamlet. And I think it makes the process simpler and more effective
for the writer. That way is the five act structure. Below I'm going to break
down how I see it, using Hamlet as a guide.
Act 1
Mystery in the wasteland
A scene is set where the main character is struggling to thrive in a mature,
decadent place. Things feel unchangable. Like a little person can't make a
difference. But a cataclysmic event occurs that demands the hero accept the
mantle of "changer" if for no other reason than to restore the status
quo.
More...
http://www.davidcarrberry.com/2015/09/the-power-of-five-act-not-three-act-play.html
***
For most of my twelve years teaching high school English, I’ve taught a lesson
on the 5-act structure of Shakespeare’s plays.
I even put it in a book.
But I don’t think any of it is right.
Two weeks ago, as we waited in a church pew for our oldest son’s preschool
graduation ceremony to begin, my wife, Liz, and I got into a debate about the
climax of Hamlet, said debate beginning with my above-repeated admission that
what I’ve been saying to students about Shakespeare’s 5-act structure I no
longer believe to be true.
More...
https://bhjames.com/2018/06/14/rethinking-shakespeares-5-act-structure/
***
Many people talk about Aristotle and his treatise Poeticsas the originator of
the five act dramatic structure, but anyone who says that hasn’t read Poetics
(you can, though, right here). It mentions that there should be a beginning,
middle, and end to a story, but says little more about dramatic structure (and
even less that makes sense for modern storytelling). That’s okay. Aristotle was
a smart person, but that doesn’t have to mean he perfectly understood story
structure.
Some claim that Shakespeare was the inventor of the five act dramatic
structure. But while Shakespearean dramas have five acts, the act and scene
breaks were written in after the fact, in 1709 by Shakespeare’s first editor,
not by Shakespeare himself.
It was likely the Roman playwright Horace who first advocated for five act
plays. In his essay on drama, Ars Poetic, written in 19 BC, he said, “Let a
play which would be inquired after, and though seen, represented anew, be
neither shorter nor longer than the fifth act.” Though in the same paragraph he
advocates using deus ex machina and a cast of no more than three members, so
I’m not sure he’s a good literary role model.
The biggest promoter of the five act structure in modern history, though, is a
German playwright and author from the mid-1800s named Gustav Freytag, the
originator of Freytag’s Pyramid.
More...
https://thewritepractice.com/five-act-structure/
***
WHAT HAPPENED
by Gertrude Stein
A FIVE ACT PLAY
ACT I
(One.)
Loud and no cataract. Not any nuisance is depressing.
(Five.)
A single sum four and five together and one, not any sun a clear signal and an
exchange.
Silence is in blessing and chasing and coincidences being ripe. A simple
melancholy clearly precious and on the surface and surrounded and mixed
strangely. A vegetable window and clearly most clearly an exchange in parts and
complete.
More...
http://ustheater.blogspot.com/2010/08/getrude-stein-what-happened.html