Fifteen Minute Plays

[catandemm]

Hello, I am a drama student researching into the implications of preparing and performing a fifteen minute play. I was wondering if anyone could give me the perspective of a writer on such a short time-constraint? Any opinions would be very helpful.
Thank you,
Cat Solomon.

[Cat Scratch]

Hi Cat,

Some more specific questions would be helpful. Do you mean in terms of limited amount of time to convey specific material? How the constraints affect story arcs, etc?

I'm not sure I have the answers to those, but I'll help if I'm able.

[Mandy-Jane]

Hi Cat

I've written several 10 minute plays and a few that ran close to 15 minutes. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think when you say a short time constraint, you're referring to the actual length of the play? As far as my experience goes, it was initially difficult because I believed that - like full-length plays - even short plays had to have a beginning, a middle and an end, along with a plausible plot line, conflict and great characters. However, I think that with such a short play, you just need to concentrate on one aspect of these factors that make up a play. For example, put some really strongly drawn characters into a funny situation. Or take a classic kind of scenario and use your characters to twist it around. My most recent short play was three men in a bar disagreeing about fairy tales and the effect they have on kids. No themes or messages in there; just funny.

Hope this helps,

Mandy

[Doug B]

I don't find a ten (or fifteen) minute time limit for a play constraining at all. The single most difficult part for me is to be ruthless cutting out unnecessary dialog. When you get right down to it, there are not many plays that are not improved with a little judicious shortening.

You don't have a lot of time to set up the scene so start the play just after the inciting incident. In the first minute or two, you need to establish: Who the characters are, their relationship, where they are and why they are there. (Example: Divorced husband and wife meet in the family meeting room at the wedding chapel at the marriage of their daughter.) You don't have time for a lot of past history so get right to the point. Three minutes in you need to have shown/demonstrated/described the status quo as it relates to the theme of the play. (They still love each other). Then introduce something that upsets the status quo. (They find out that their ex still loves them.) Most of the rest of the play is the search for a new status quo, whether it is found or not. (What will their new relationship look like?) If a new status quo is found, it must be demonstrated. If not, we need to understand whether it will be found after the end of the play (left up to the audience to decide what the new status quo is) or if there is no possibility for a new status quo. (New spouses and children make any immediate change in their relationship impossible. But there is always the distant future . . . ). As soon as this has been accomplished, end the play.

Hope this helps.

[Cat Scratch]

I've read a number of not-so-great short plays, and what they all had in common was a lack of plot. Like Mandy-Jane mentioned, there were some great scenarios, but many of them lacked a point. A short play must draw some conclusion--a character must be further along at the end than they were at the beginning, or something else similar and meaningful. Too many short plays are simply funny sketches. They lead up to a punchline and then nothing much happens after the laugh. These are still plays, not comic books.

[bison]

I've read a few short works that were simply cute little "slices of life", events that happened, but no plot, no beginning, middle or ending.
There's a big difference.
Short works require a lot thinking and a lot of editing to be effective.

[steveg144]

I'm finding the short-form playwrighting to be extremely challenging. This month our local playwright association is doing a PlaySlam, with a three-minute time limit. Now that is challenging! You'd be amazed how difficult it is to say anything meaningful, dramatically speaking, in less than three minutes. It's been enjoyable, though.

[Mandy-Jane]

You have a playwrighting association? That sounds fantastic. A PlaySlam sounds great. Do you have to write the plays beforehand, or right then at the time? I would love to hear how it all works.

Mandy

[steveg144]

You have a playwrighting association? That sounds fantastic. A PlaySlam sounds great. Do you have to write the plays beforehand, or right then at the time? I would love to hear how it all works.

Mandy

No, we submit two plays ( less than 3 minutes each) in advance. The first batch get performed, and the audience votes. Top five vote-getters get their second submission performed in the finals. The audience votes again on these five, and last play standing wins. :) It's a fun concept, because it's "people's choice" and they encourage playwrights to "invite your friends and tell them to stuff the ballot box so you can win," tongue in cheek but not really. :) Good way to get bums on seats, as they say. And yes, I consider myself very lucky to have a playwrighting group in my area. I live in the rear end of nowhere (literally a tobacco field to the left and a cow pasture to the right) but I'm less than 50 miles from Chapel Hill, home of the Univ of North Carolina and a big cultural center in the southeast US. So it's a one-hour drive for me, but it's worth it for the opportunity to get feedback, critique, sanity check, etc.