Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Welcome to the 3rd Annual SOOP to NUTS Short Play Festival original short-play
competition at our 530 Studios in Pelham, NY
PRIZES: 1st place: $500, 2nd place: $250, 3rd place $100.
NUMBER OF PLAYS: There will be 20 – 25 plays chosen as semi-finalists each
receiving two performances (one evening / one matinee); 5 plays will be chosen
for the final evening of competition.
***
SPELLBINDER A Quarterly Literary and Art Magazine ~ Autumn 2022 issue
Maximum of 5 pages of A4 content. Monologues are welcome.
Starting with the Autumn 2022 issue contributors, we pay a £3 honorarium per
acceptance after print publication.
***
We are open for submissions for our Special One Minute Play Anthology
'Contemporary Minute Plays-Volume 1' The One Minute Play can be a tragedy or
comedy or tragi-comedy.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** MEDIEVAL TIMES ***
Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament is a live two-hour show with a delicious
four-course feast served medieval-style, or without silverware. Guests cheer
for six brave Knights as they compete in games of skill, authentic jousting
matches and swordfights in an attempt to win the tournament. Beautiful, rare,
Pure Spanish Horses (P.R.E.) are featured throughout the show in breathtaking
acts of dressage. As the dynamic performance unfolds, the energy rises inside
the 1,000 seat Grand Ceremonial Arena. The heroic knights, spirited horses and
the flight of the falcon leave guests cheering for more. This unique
entertainment experience is a memory that will be remembered for years.
https://apply.jobappnetwork.com/medieval-times/
***
In the 1960s, on the small island of Mallorca, Spain, Jose Montaner had a
thriving barbeque business. So did someone else. Montaner and his rival each
vied for customers, locals and visitors from the island’s tourist trade.
One day, Montaner overheard some English tourists talking about medieval fairs,
and an idea occurred to him: What if he could lure more barbeque patrons by
seating them in front of an indoor dinner theater with dueling knights, serving
wenches, and horses?
The smell of manure may not have earned him any Michelin stars, but Montaner
was on to something. By the 1980s, he and a group of investors had taken his
notion and expanded it into the U.S. under the Medieval Times banner, a
sprawling bit of performance art that marries the spectacle of professional
wrestling with a four-course meal. While it’s never been heavily
franchised—there are only nine locations in North America—the marriage of
simulated chivalry and free Pepsi refills has proven to be a surprisingly
effective form of entertainment.
Part of what motivated Montaner’s pursuit of what would become Medieval Times
was his interest in Spanish history. He was also influenced by the 1961 movie
El Cid, a drama starring Charlton Heston that featured many of the tropes meant
to transport his visitors to 11th-century Spain: sword duels, castles, and
galloping horses.
Montaner put on a show in Spain for years before an investment panel was
gathered to bring the idea to the States. Scouts visited Orlando, Florida in
1980 and came across a prime spot of real estate in Kissimmee, just 15 minutes
from Walt Disney World. By 1983, the first Medieval Times on American soil was
open for business.
Then as now, the concept of “dinner theater” was not held in the highest of
regard. The first stage production that served meals opened in 1953 in
Richmond, Virginia, and initially kept their meals separate from their plays
until audiences who drove distances to get there complained about getting
hungry during the shows. After experiencing a surge of popularity in the 1960s
and 1970s, the idea of combining a live performance with a plated meal started
to collapse. The aging actors who could provide publicity for such shows
started gravitating toward television spots and commercials, where they might
earn as much for one day of shooting as they did doing several weeks of
stage-and-steak work.
More...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501000/knight-club-history-medieval-times-dinner-theater
***
On a crisp late January afternoon my husband Hugo and I snaked through the
stanchions at Medieval Times in Buena Park, California.
“Would you like to upgrade your ticket to include a visit to the Museum of
Torture, m’lady?” the customer ser(f)ice clerk asked, “No, I think we’re good”
I said. We made our way into the roadside castle where costumed staff placed
green paper crowns on our heads. Silently, we took in the scene around us: the
bar serving themed drinks in plastic souvenir cups, the gift shop full of
pewter dragon tchotchkes, and the birthday knighting ceremony, wondering what
we were in for.
Why I was at Medieval Times’ dinner and tournament you ask? My Mother-in-law
gifted my husband and me tickets for Christmas because she (rightfully) figured
that we needed to get out more. Neither of us had ever been to Medieval Times,
let alone dinner theater, but my deep love of kitsch led me to think it might
be a fun experience.
Medieval Times suggests that Lords and Ladies arrive over an hour before their
scheduled tournament for yet undetermined reasons. Most visitors used the time
to purchase drinks, but we used it for people watching. Going into the
experience, I figured that if I were to have any critiques of the show, it
would be about the historical accuracy. I don’t know why I expected myself, as
a historian of 20th century American foodways, to suddenly have extensive
knowledge of medieval jousting tournaments. Instead, I found myself curious,
and frankly judgmental of the entire experience. As we waited for our
tournament to begin, our morale dipped. We pondered:
How is that we’re all Lords? Shouldn’t some of us be peasants?
Wait, our meal comes with hummus and veggies? Is that historically accurate?
More...
https://www.clarestudiesfood.com/news/2019/3/11/a-food-historian-visits-medieval-times
***
During a Sunday shift at a Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament theater in late
October, Rigo Cardenas got a text from a high school friend saying that he was
going viral on TikTok.
Cardenas, 22, who performs as a knight at the themed chain, didn't even have a
TikTok at the time.
So after his second show of the day, as he fielded dozens of messages from
friends, he looked up the video — posted by an attendee — that was turning him
into the platform's biggest heartthrob.
"It was definitely like a smile ear-to-ear of, like, embarrassment,"
Cardenas told NBC News by phone Tuesday. "It's pretty fun."
That initial TikTok, posted Oct. 24 by user @Ch3rryCig4rette, briefly shows him
on horseback before the user reverses the camera to show her face. Her jaw
drops in awe. That video has since racked up nearly 2 million views.
Another video, posted by the same user on the same day, shows Cardenas flipping
his dark shoulder-length hair as he walks across the arena, sword in hand. That
one's garnered nearly 3 million views.
“It was absolutely going crazy," Cardenas said of the number of views the
videos were receiving.
Since then, others have made their way to the Medieval Times location in Buena
Park, California, where he has worked for three years, to get their own video
of "The Black and White Knight," as he is now known on TikTok.
More...
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/meet-medieval-knight-people-tiktok-are-swooning-rcna4393
***
After a recent period of introspection, Medieval Times has decided it is a
little heavy on the dudes and a little light on female leadership. To fix the
problem, it is replacing all of its kings with queens at each of its nine North
American locations—the switches are already in place in Dallas, Chicago, and
New Jersey.
The new plot played out in the Medieval Times arena still has knights battling
each other in a tournament overseen by their monarch, only now she's a woman.
The twist is that one of the knights defies her authority because she's a
woman, and she calls out his sexism. According to the show's director, “You do
get a huge reaction from the females in the crowd." Hell yes.
This isn't exactly a feminist rallying cry around the implications of a
medieval #MeToo movement, however. As The New York Times reports, the script
was changed simply because audience members were wondering why the only women
in the show played princesses. And those heaping plates of greasy fried
chicken, corn on the cob, spiced potatoes, and garlic bread are still served by
"wenches." But hey, progress is progress.
More...
https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a15925649/medieval-times-queens/
***
What do you want the feel of a Medieval Times show to be?
It has to be family-friendly, in so much as we’re killing off four or five guys
every night. It’s a family destination. The idea is to weave the story through
the action. It would be difficult to have an hour and forty-five minutes of
non-stop action. You try to make the characters a little multidimensional along
the way.
How do you bring these characters to life?
The audience is divided up into six sections each night, so that relationship
[with the knights] has already established itself. Whether we had the king
before, or the queen, we make sure the audience understands that all the
knights that they’re cheering for are in service to the monarch.
What are some of the previous changes you’ve introduced to the story?
We came out of the gate with the first show I wrote. We had an after-the-battle
scene all in torchlight, and the guys all in distressed costumes, as a prequel
to the show. Then in the next show, we had a flashback scene that we had never
done before that took place in the arena, but it was a scene previous to the
action in the show. We also started micing some of the knights, which we had
never done before, and assigning them speaking roles. That turned into, in the
last three shows, the knight wearing the mic, who was subsequently in one of
the final combats, was probably going to be carrying one quarter of the
dialogue.
After something like 20 years of writing the show on my own, or close to it, I
felt like we had probably run all the possibilities. It started seeming
repetitive. The king this, the princess that, the king this, the princess
that…We were really looking for a way to change the model. And we have to be
careful, because people come to see the horses, they come to see the falcon,
they come to see the games, they come to see the jousting, so when you look at
it, you’re really only talking about 30 percent of the show you can play with.
What kinds of things do people often request to be added to the show?
We have people asking us why we don’t have a dragon, why we don’t use archers.
I mean, it’s a 360-degree theater, which way would you like us to shoot the
arrows? We had pyro for years, but we took it out. Indoor pyro is expensive and
unsafe. A lot of people want us to use fake blood. But we’ve got kids there,
and they’re eating dinner. You don’t want to spatter blood all over the front
row.
We do take pride that there’s nothing fake about the show. Everybody you see
talking is talking. The weapons are real, the combat is real. The stunts on the
horses are real. We don’t use anyone in a mask, we don’t use pre-recorded
stuff. No video, no lasers. What you see is all real. It’s live.
What are some things that, in a perfect world, you’d like to see added to the
show?
We’ve danced around with acrobatics and aerial [performances] over the years.
But with the limitations of the ceilings [it’s tough]. Like in California,
where they did 81 shows in July, I don’t know how many specialist people I
would need to staff that. That was something we experimented with once or twice
and then realized it probably wasn’t going to happen.
Then recently we were looking at the floor mapping [projections] that you see the
NHL and the NBA doing. The problem is that arenas have a 60-80 foot ceiling
height to throw the projection, but ours is only like 25 feet, so it would
require a ton of projectors. And then the surface of the arena is only gonna be
pristine when the show starts. Once the horses start running around out there,
you have this mottled surface that’s not going to be good for projection
mapping.
We are upgrading the lights across the country. We’re going all LED.
More...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-times-interview-queen-cordner
***
In 11th-century Spain, a nobleman trying to put his hand up the queen’s skirt
after a royal feast might be subjected to medieval torture methods.
But at the Medieval Times just off Route 3, dealing with that kind of behavior
has been accepted as part of the job for too long, said Monica Garza, one of
several actresses who plays the queen at the dinner-and-a-tournament
attraction.
Garza said management made her feel like a “diva” for requesting additional
security protocols after she pointed out increasingly bold behavior from
guests. It was only after an incident in which a rowdy ticket holder got close
to her throne and tried to shout into her microphone, Garza said, that
management installed a chain to block access to her.
The desire for bolstered security and other safety measures at the castle —
where falling off horses can be part of the job description — was one reason
that queens, knights, squires and stablehands at the Lyndhurst castle voted on
Friday to unionize.
The
unionization effort, first reported by The Huffington Post, prevailed on
Friday, when the employees voted, 26 to 11, to join the American Guild of
Variety Artists. The medievalists will join a wide array of performers
represented by the guild, including the Radio City Rockettes, some circus
performers, and the character actors who perform at Disneyland — including
Mulan and Aladdin, for example — in California.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/arts/medieval-times-union.html
***
The American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) is an AFL-CIO affiliated labor
union founded in 1939 to represent performing Artists and Stage Managers in
live performances in the Variety field. The variety area of performance
includes singers & dancers in Theatrical Revues and touring shows (non-book
shows), Theme Park performers, skaters, circus performers, comedians &
stand-up comics, Cabaret & Club Artists,
lecturers/poets/monologists/spokespersons, and Variety performers working at
private parties & special events.
https://agvausa.com
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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
TEDxAsburyPark’s 1act.1idea is accepting submissions of short plays (8- 18
minutes run time) with a big idea worth sharing. We seek original work that
focuses our hearts and minds on any of these themes: Collaboration,
Determination, Democracy, Diversity, and/or "All Together Now".
***
The «Neem» award was created to support and identify underground dramatic
waters.
Nominations: Awarded one prize in the nomination «A play that no one will ever
agree to stage»
The author of the play-winner will receive a cash prize: 20£.
***
SPIDER®, a literary magazine for children, features fresh and engaging
literature, poems, articles, and activities for newly independent readers.
Editors seek energetic, beautifully crafted submissions with strong “kid
appeal” (an elusive yet recognizable quality, often tied to high-interest
elements such as humor, adventure, and suspense).
We seek fiction of all kinds: fantasy, folk or fairytale, sci-fi, historical,
humorous, or realistic. Whether the setting is long-ago or contemporary, or the
protagonist is a shy newcomer, clever trickster, class clown, fantasy creature,
or superhero, characters and the worlds they inhabit should be complex and
believable. Plays should have 2–6 characters so that a child could feasibly
perform the play at home with family or friends.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** REWORKING ***
The most controversial issue in the theater today (1988) continues to be the
reinterpretation or ''deconstruction'' of celebrated classical plays. There is
no theatrical activity that more inflames purist sensibilities in criticism and
the academy - nothing that stimulates as many caustic generalizations about the
debasements of modern culture. Perhaps because ''deconstruction'' as an
assonant noun if not as a method, is so perilously close to ''destruction'' and
''desecration,'' the standard purist posture is like that of Switzers before
the gates of the Vatican, defending sacred texts against the barbarians. The
paradox is that both sides are really devoted to the same esthetic purpose,
which is the deeper penetration of significant dramatic literature. The
difference is in the attitude. Is classical reinterpretation a reinforcing or a
defiling act - a benign or a malignant development in the history of modern
theater?
My own position is a qualified vote of support for conceptual directing. I have
long believed that if dramatic classics are not seen with fresh eyes they grow
fossilized - candidates for taxidermy. Even the most harebrained textual
reworking may open up new corridors into a play, while the more ''faithful''
version is often a listless recycling of stilted conventions. That is why I
continue to echo Artaud's call for ''No More Masterpieces'' - great plays can
be ''desecrated'' by excessive piety as much as by excessive irreverence.
Although I champion a radical auteurism in directing, however, not all examples
of this process have the same integrity of purpose. One can support the idea of
classical reinterpretation without defending all its forms or ignoring the fact
that what passes for originality is sometimes merely another kind of ego-tripping.
Let me refine my position by distinguishing between two common methods of
reworking the classics - one that depends largely on external physical changes
and another that changes our whole notion of the play. It is a distinction that
can be illustrated through analogies with figures of speech - the prosaic
simile and the poetic metaphor. Directors who are fond of similes assume that
because a play's action is like something from a later period, its environment
can be changed accordingly. Directors with a feeling for metaphor are more
interested in generating provocative theatrical images - visually expressed
through physical production, histrionically through character and relationships
- that are suggestive of the play rather than specific, reverberant rather than
concrete.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/06/theater/stage-view-reworking-the-classics-homage-or-ego-trip.html
***
It’s happy-making that the generally acknowledged living sovereign of musical
theater has been open to smart tinkering with his work. Fiasco — which emerged
from the Brown/Trinity MFA Acting program and is known for scrappy, energetic,
steamer-trunks-and-scavenged-props takes on classics — have turned to lean
double-casting to streamline the 1981 musical, which originally flopped
mightily but, over the years, has received lots of reworking from its creators
(Sondheim on music and lyrics and George Furth on book) and has become a cult
classic among highbrow musical-theater lovers. The company has also done a bit
of fleshing out of the script’s arc, most notably adding a scene from the
musical’s source, the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss
Hart.
More...
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/theater-fiascos-lo-fi-reworking-of-merrily-we-roll-along.html
***
GNIT is a reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, a verse epic based on
Norwegian folklore and the playwright’s own tortured family life. For audience
members who know the source text, Eno’s take will be a hoot; for those who
don’t, it might well seem like a strange, jaunty trip through random dramatic
tropes. Eno hews closely to Ibsen’s plot, following the self-absorbed
protagonist, Peter (Joe Curnutte), as he leaves the miserable home he shares
with his despairing mother (Deborah Hedwall), becomes a fugitive, recklessly
woos several women and flees his homeland for exotic adventures abroad. There
are a number of 21st-century updates—flirty dairy maids are now a trio of DTF
grad students—but the play also keeps one foot in a simpler, semi-magical
Scandinavian past, complete with trolls.
More...
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/gnit-review-will-eno-peer-gynt-off-broadway
***
It cracks itself wide open to the audience; it hits them in the face. The Wife
of Willesden – Zadie Smith’s terrific adaptation of Chaucer, gloriously staged
by Indhu Rubasingham and triumphantly embodied by Clare Perkins – is shot
through with the spirit of its heroine, who leaps across the centuries to
proclaim what she thinks it is that women really really want.
The spectators are squeezed by the action before a word has been spoken. Robert
Jones has redesigned the auditorium so that it is partly a cabaret space with
some of the audience seated at tables in a pub, based on the Sir Colin Campbell
opposite the theatre in Kilburn High Road. Jones is aiming to create “that
infamous sticky carpet feeling”. Light bounces off shelves of bottles; the
publican wears a leopardskin top and big gold hoops; the punters – from church
and temple and mosque and schul and utter godlessness – jostle to tell their
stories.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/21/the-wife-of-willesden-zadie-smith-kiln-review-rare-earth-mettle-royal-court
***
Ivo van Hove and West Side Story are not an obvious match. The Belgian director
specialises in stripping densely cerebral classic works of theatre and cinema
down to their dramatic essence. “I Feel Pretty” are three words that would
appear to have little place in his austere world.
So it’s little surprise that the chirpy number has been axed from his revival
of Jerome Robbins’s boisterous musical pageant (with a book by Arthur Laurents,
music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim) about racially
charged gang violence in 1950s New York.
That excision sets the tone for Van Hove’s boldly reworked staging, which is
darker, grungier and more violent than the 1961 film adaptation. The
sombre-toned streetwear and tattoos sported by most of the 39-strong cast
indicate that the setting has been shifted to the present day. The action still
nominally takes place on Manhattan’s now thoroughly gentrified Upper West Side.
But Luke Halls’s haunting slow-motion video sequences of deserted streetscapes,
which fill a screen covering the entire width of the mostly bare stage, seem to
depict the grittier parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens.
More...
https://www.ft.com/content/8c96682c-53cc-11ea-a1ef-da1721a0541e
***
“Life Sucks,” Aaron Posner’s comic adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,”
is a whimsical retelling of the classic play that quite delightfully disrupts
the original’s quiet desperation and dark humor. Moving at a quick if
dramatically melancholic pace and incorporating ideas pulled from pop
psychology, the comedy deconstructs and reassembles the original with myriad
clever turns and an ending that is genuinely and surprisingly uplifting. That’s
not to say you won’t shed a tear or two, if you’re even a little sentimental
the closing scene will likely give you “all the feels.”
The story’s essential characters are present. Vanya, and almost everyone in the
show, still pines and moans with love for his brother-in-law’s wife; and he’s
still angry with the professor and disappointed in himself. Sonia still yearns
for any scrap of affection from the doctor; and she’s still patiently
persistent and remarkably tenderhearted.
More...
https://kdhx.org/articles/theatre-reviews/1142-‘life-sucks’-gives-chekhov-a-seriously-funny-and-strangely-sunny-outlook
***
The American Repertory Theater's (A.R.T) electrifying production of
"1776" is no ordinary history lesson. From the moment the cast steps
onstage in what appears to be regular street clothes and then transforms with
the pulling up of socks, the donning of brocade jackets and buckled shoes, and
the use of elegant choreography by Jeffrey L. Page, it's evident that the
opening scene foreshadows an energetic ride down a familiar path.
Typically, I'm slow to warm up to historical founding-of-America fare. Not
because it's unimportant, but because it's often exclusionary. Here,
"1776" (through July 24 at the Loeb Drama Center) with direction from
Diane Paulus and Page differs as much as it can, in all the best ways.
There's a diverse, multi-generational cast, who identify as female, nonbinary
and trans, so the people onstage represent America more fully; a colorful
"We the People" mural by Artists for Humanity; and a multimedia
exhibit where cast members talk about this document and their stories as part
of American history. In addition to the complementary happenings, there's an
infectious buzz to the performance that might come from the two-year
pandemic-induced wait to bring the story to the stage.
More...
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/06/03/1776-american-repertory-theater-review
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A note to my writer friends
I just learned that there is a
connection between self-compassion and creativity. When we are critical and
self-doubting of ourselves our creativity goes down. When we are self- compassionate we reduce our anxiety and
our creativity goes up.
The great Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15,
1894 – September 26, 1937) was a blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz
Age.
Nicknamed the
"Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer
of the 1920s and 1930s.
She is often regarded as
one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow
blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.
Born in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings
survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a
group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own.
Her successful recording
career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut
short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43.
Big Bill Bronzy
Big Bill
Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley; June 26, 1903 – August 14, 1958) was a blues
singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played
country music to mostly African-American audiences.
Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully
navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with
working-class African-American audiences.
In the 1950s a return to his traditional
folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American
folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks
him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th
century.
Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
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
Jean-Philippe Rameau, conductor
Jean-Philippe
Rameau (September 1683 – September 1764) was a French composer and
music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and
music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the
dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French
composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin.
_-_001.jpg)
Little
is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won
fame as a major theorist of music with his Treatise on Harmony (1722) and also
in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which
circulated throughout Europe.
He
was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation
chiefly rests today.
His
debut, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely
attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use
of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera
was soon acknowledged, and he was later attacked as an
"establishment" composer by those who favored Italian opera during
the controversy known as the Querelle des Bouffons in the 1750s.
Rameau's
music had gone out of fashion by the end of the 18th century, and it was not
until the 20th that serious efforts were made to revive it. Today, he enjoys
renewed appreciation with performances and recordings of his music ever more
frequent.
