10 Minute Plays, Round two

Reading these four plays probably set me back farther than I had already been about writing only because it opened up a lot more options than it seemed to close. Though I did not like these four plays as much as the first batch, their themes varied greatly, and really showed me that people will watch 10 minutes of almost anything. The characters need to be quick and dirty, but if you have good dialogue, your play will almost always work for some audience somewhere.

The play I liked the least was Aimee. I felt that in 2003, it’s point may have been that homeland security is an overbearing organization, but in 2010, we’ve seen quite a few jabs at homeland, and all of those jabs were more clever than this one. The only character I liked was Larry, and that’s because he seems pretty absurd and goofy. Everyone else was stiff. Even the ending bugged me. The turn happens far too quickly (even for a 10-minute play), and the last lines are begging to be cut. In all, not my cup of tea.

I liked the Philadelphia, because it sounds the most like sketch comedy to me. There really wasn’t much of a point (an in 10 minutes a phenomenal point is typically hard to come by), but the action seemed quick and enjoyable. People are also very interested in labeling situations, so Philadelphia was good for that type of comedy. Really not much else to say about Philadelphia besides the fact that I’ve seen almost the same exact thing a hundred times on How I Met Your Mother or any number of good sitcoms. There is definitely a market for this, and just because it may not have a serious message or make the audience cry doesn’t mean it’s not good writing.

Anything for you had a neat style to it that I am curious to explore. Lynette was able to say the craziest things, and less than two lines later I completely bought it. I am still not a hundred percent sure how she did it, but I think it has something to do with the fact that she just blurted out a secret without any lead-up. Her following lines acted as rationales, and after she was done explaining once, I took for granted everything she had previously stated. Anything for you was a little predictable, but not without its merits of being a witty and quick comedy.

Duet for Bear and Dog was a nice piece that I thought was probably my favorite of the four, as well as the one that expanded my subject matter the most. The take home message from this play is actually that any character can be on stage for 10 minutes. The audience comes to a theater to watch a show. They are there to watch and listen, and they are willing to do that almost without any withdrawl for about 10 minutes. After that, if you haven’t hooked them they may start to check out, but for that 10 minutes you have them. Bear and Dog’s two main characters were animals, which would drag down a full length play, but was lovely and quaint this time. I may try to put an animal in my next play, we’ll see.