What do I look for when judging plays?

Mandy-Jane

venturing ever further into the unknown
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I will complete a play this year! I will!
Our theatre group is currently running a One Act Play Competition. As I've never judged a play competition before, are there any resources anywhere that can give me an idea as to what I should be looking for? Is there a checklist of things that should be in every play (depending obviously on the type of play)? I'm thinking something that sets out the criteria for the different aspects that should make up a winning play.

Am I making sense here ('cos I don't feel that I am)?

Of course, I have a fair idea of what could be included myself - conflict, plausible plot line, believable characters, ........ But I'm sure there must be more. I want to do this right,so I don't want to leave anything out.

Okay, I've confused you enough, so I'll stop now.

Any help would be great. Thanks.
 

Bmwhtly

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It's hard to say, because a lot of it comes down to personal preferences.
But even if a play doesn't appeal to you, you can still judge if it's good or not.
Specifics to look for?
Does the plot make sense? Are the characters well-developed? Does the scene-structure fit the theme? Is there a point? Will it keep people interested for an Act?
But don't, under any circumstances, assume I know what I'm talking about.
 

bison

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Another thing to look for--is it 'doable' from a production standpoint.
Are there too many scenes, too many characters, etc. Would the
logistics be too demanding?
Lots of things go into a successful play being produced.
Good luck with your endeavor.
 

Doug B

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I've judged a couple of ten minute play competitions. I'm no expert but here is my take on it:

How is the length? Sometimes it is hard to judge how long it will run - there are so many variables but I don't think you can do 30 pages in ten minutes. More often we get three or four pages - too short.

I don't worry about the format. We seek new playwrights and many have no idea of format. I'm looking for the play not how pretty it is.

I look for three things in the first three or four pages: Who are the characters, where are they and what is their relationship? I want to learn the inciting incident and hope to see the point of attack. If I don't see this, the play is likely going to wander without a solid plot. If I don't feel a real need to read the rest of the play after the first few pages, it probably won't interest the audience either.

After I have read it, I ask myself if this was the most important day in the characters lives. If not, I'm reading about the wrong day.

I look for an ending. Many plays just stop after the climax without showing the new (or lack of) status quo.

Do I feel that the play has accomplished something or is it an exercise in dialog?

My strongest evaluation criteria is how I feel after I have finished reading the play. Did I learn something? Was I challenged? Did it change my thinking about an issue? Would I like to act in it?

Hope this helps.
 

bison

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Doug's comments remind me of something.

Consider, while the playwright is king, the play will be presented in as
many different ways as it is produced.

The director's take on the "words" and the actor's interpretation ultimately bring the work to life. It won't necessarily be performed the same way on
consecutive nights.

Ergo, there is no 'good' way to analyze a script. Just go with the basics.
 

Cat Scratch

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Doug's advice is really good.

I've judged one-act contests in the past, and I find that what a lot of the entires have in common is that they're mere skits--there's a set-up, a punchline, and that's about it (you can imagine a tiny high-hat in the corner, being tapped at the end). So look for a solid ending, where the main character has learned something, or experienced some sort of change.

Also make sure that each scene has an action, which is not to be confused with activity. Activity is folding laundry, etc. Action is the driving force behind the scene--the characters want something, decide to do something, or otherwise are obtaining a goal, be it physical or otherwise. No talking head scenes where people philosiphize for no reason. A lot of playwrights feel they have something to say, but they don't couch it into scenes where what they're saying/doing has any consequence. This bores audience-members to tears, no matter how interesting it is.

Good luck! Hope you find some great plays!
 

Saint Fool

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You've gotten good advice.

I'll just add that whether you like each script or not, take the time to read parts of it out loud. Sometimes what appears flat on the page comes alive in the hearing and .... sigh ... sometimes what reads to the brain as exciting becomes dull as dishwater.

Have fun!
 

Doug B

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The director's take on the "words" and the actor's interpretation ultimately bring the work to life. It won't necessarily be performed the same way on
consecutive nights.

I know this is late but I was rereading the thread and it reminded me of something.

I focus on the shorter plays - ten minutes to one acts. Last summer I presented eight of my short plays at one of our local theaters. There was no way that I could direct all of them so I asked another director (who I respect greatly) to direct two of them for me. One of the plays I asked her to direct was "Visiting Dad" based on the time I went to Florida to put my father into an assisted living home.

Without going into all the details, the director presented a VERY different play than I wrote. The words were the same but the entire premise was not what I had written. Where I had written about a frail old man frustrated by life and his inability function in it, she directed a play about a funny old man who we laughed at as he tried to function in a world he no longer understood.

The audience loved it. After closing night, I talked to a very good friend of mine who had helped me develop the script. I asked him what he thought about the play as presented compared to what I had written. He said they were very, very different but equally good.

I still wish I had seen the play I wrote.

Because of this, I feel it is very important to present the playwright's vision of the play on its first presentation. Earlier this month I directed five ten minute plays written by local writers. In each case I spent time with the playwright to understand their vision of the play. I invited the playwrights to rehearsals to give me comments as we worked on the play.

As a sideline: Having the playwright there was helpful when we needed rewrites during the early rehearsals.

Just a comment.

Doug
 
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bison

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Doug,
I don't see how one could direct a play without input from the playwright, mainly for the reasons you mentioned. That is, if he is available.
 

Doug B

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For most of the plays I direct, the playwright is not available. I mean who can call Neil Simon or Jeffery Hatcher or Bernard Slade?

Let me give you a couple of examples how the same play can be interpreted differently by different directors.

This spring, I directed Enchanted April by Matthew Barber (from the book by Elizabeth Von Armin). I had seen the play twice (once at a small community theater in Washington state and once at a medium sized professional theater in Florida) and both times I felt the play missed the whole point of the story. It was about love or more specifically how four women change to find/refind love. In both productions that I had seen, the transitions of the four women were completely missed. They were there in the words but both productions de-emphasized then to the point that the audience totally missed them.

The transitions were one of the three elements of the play I chose to emphasize. Our success was demonstrated in the lobby after a performance when a woman I didn't know came up to me and told me that she had seen Enchanted April at Seattle's largest professional theater and didn't understand it. She said that our (very amateur) production was far better because she finally understood what the play was about. She specifically mentioned the changes that each woman underwent. She went so far as to tell me that she wished she could undergo a transition in her life like the women in the play underwent.

Another example. I saw a performance of The Vagina Monologues at a medium sized community theater and found it offensive and mean spirited. It was an diatribe by three angry women. About a year after that I was approached by a friend who wanted to direct it and wanted me to do the technical design and produce it. I told her my feelings about the play but she convinced me that the play was about love. I was reluctant but I also had confidence in her so I agreed. I stayed away from the rehearsal process because I was afraid of what I might see. I finally saw the show when we put the tech with the play and I was TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY!!! It was a warm, loving, passionate, funny play. The audiences loved it too. It is by far the most successful play we have ever done.

That reminds me of a third example. I have seen several productions of the musical Camelot but one presentation far exceeded the others in terms of emotional impact on the audience - the director had chosen to emphasize the the effect of the play on King Arthur. Every other production emphasized the love affair between Guinevere and Lancelot.

Look at the plays of Shaw. He spends as much time and effort describing how he sees the play as he does in the play itself.

I think that everyone who reads a play will come up with a slightly different interpretation of it. One of the acting coaches I work with regularly has an exercise where he has two actors act out two pages from a script. Then he goes around asking the rest of the students what they saw. Remember that everyone saw the same blocking and heard the same words but everyone has a very different idea what the play is about.

That is why we, as playwrights and directors, need to be careful that we do not spoon feed an audience but allow them the right to interpret the play they want so they see the play they want. Haven't you ever left a play and argued with a friend about something you saw in the play that your friend didn't? That's because a well written play allows the audience to see the play they want to see by interpreting it the way they want. As director we can guide them to a certain point but we can't be overpowering and tell them EXACTLY what they are seeing.

Make sense?

Doug
 
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bison

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Color me naive but it should be the playwright's vision that is striven for.

In the real world, it is clear the director's take (or maybe the lead actor/actress) that comes through.

Maybe that is what makes live theatre so unique. A movie, once in the can, is always the same; a novel, once printed, never changes.

A stage play can be different every time it shows.
 

abra-c

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The only thing I can add right now, star places that make you laugh out loud so you can tell the playwright what they're doing well.

We ask ourselves, is this worth producing. Play wrighting is tough, but I genuinely believe that a production will only come together if there's an inherent energy to the play. Will everyone involved believe that they are a part of something important- this goes for slapstick comedy, improv, all types of theatre. Is the playwright invested in this story, did she/he make it as good as it can be.

I always evaluate for rhythm, character, good dialogue, style, is there an arc- but if the visions there than you shouldn't have to think to hard about the elements.

Enjoy reading!
 

Cat Scratch

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I have a very different expectation as a playwright. One of the beautiful things about the art of theatre is the openness to interpretation in the text. I enjoy writing my plays and then allowing them to take on a life of their own as the rest of the artists see fit. Then it becomes a beautiful collaboration--something much bigger than simply me and a laptop computer. Only then does it truly breathe and live.

I try to guide directors and actors very little when my plays are produced. I feel if they do not get my intent based on what is in the text, then I didn't do my job. Perhaps if your grandfather character could so easily be played as a bumbling Falstaff, your true intention didn't show on the page. If a playwright must be consulted to achieve his true vision, then the writing was not strong enough.

That said, there will always be different interpretations of your work, whether it's written as well as possible (as Doug pointed out, with beautiful and famous plays) or not. But you must understand that's the nature of theatre and embrace that, or else you aren't ready to be a playwright. There are other artists involved, and you're agreeing to allow them to put their stamp on it as well. You won't always like the result, but that's the nature of the beast.
 

brydra

i'm always reading scripts and watching plays (i encounter a lot of bad).

the one thing that stands out for me: the language.

I look for that line (s) that stay with me and that I want to savor. My favorite playwrights always hit me with beautiful poetry (structured as dialogue).
 

IanFraser

I'm with brydra on that. I can tell within a page or two (if not less) if the playwright actually knows what they're doing, and has created something that's flowing well. It should be very obvious from the start.

Don't get me wrong, its not about 'something happening' in the content - its about the control and use of language that the playwright exhibits from the start. You can feel when you're given a story by someone who knows what they're doing, is telling the story in a fun way, and who has a clear sense of the world that the play takes place in.

I think it's craftsmanship. Something that's a step or two beyond mere 'technique'.

There's a big difference between that, and someone who's got talking heads on a stage, reciting lines which may have sounded cute to the writer as they muttered them in private, but which simply won't feel real before an audience. It doesn't matter how much histrionics or deaths happen on stage in that story, if the dialogue sucks, then it doesn't really matter. Good plays are always about the language.

The thing to look for, is 'does this play sweep you up with its imagination, crafted dialog that makes you grin, and which you can picture taking place before you as you read it?'

Is it an airplane, moving at speed through the air, with elegance and control - or is it an old wheezing, badly patched model T Ford that's barely moving and just wasting space on the road..

If you can't tell, then perhaps read some plays by acknowledged and accepted 'good' playwrights, and get a sense of that elegance and control in action, and see how the material flows for you in your minds eye when reading - and then pick up the new plays,
and see what you feel..?
 

Don Allen

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Most of these comments are dead on from a director/playwright POV. If you're interested? From an actor POV, it all comes down to pacing of the story which allows the actor a chance to create energy with dialog. (musicals not withstanding) Good plays move fast, bad plays drag and the drag is usually the result of poor dialog timing. The leads in a play should never have to listen to bit players for longer than a sentence or two with out regaining the audience focus. Also, something huge to look for (I think) is whether or not the playwright has allowed for actor interpretation of the words. A good play, someone mentioned Neil S. (a great ex.) "Barefoot in the park" really allowed the actors to react to the dialog so that the audience had time to laugh and cry with the follies of the young couple. Sets, bad acting, or even a stiff audience are out of the control of the writer. But, pacing is all about the writer, at least as far as the actor is concerned. Hope it helps, but what do I know? i was just a shit actor....