The Ten Minute Play

Please take 30 minutes (and only thirty minutes) today to work on your monologue projects. These should be starting to form and will be due October 1. If you are filming, you better start doing that so that you have time to edit.

After 30 minutes, please stop writing & prepare to meet with the following groups:

A. Addie, Monica, Zach, Brianna, Aubrey

B. Alex, Justice, Nautica, Valerie, Whitney

C. Jerry, Ledibel, Jenee, Shayla, Kennethea

D. Khari, Wade, Tashae, Victoria, Alaina

Read the six 10-minute plays out loud with each other. Each group member should take turns reading the roles and stage directions. Please read the entire packet (perhaps there will be a test on these...)

The form you are examining is the 10-minute play. We did a little of this during the last two years. The things to remember about 10-minute plays is that they are similar to short stories:

They have a premise
They have a dramatic situation (setting, characters in action, & a complication)
They have a beginning, middle, and end
They have a tight structure (most never change scene or setting)
They are at most 10 pages long.
There are usually fewer than four characters. Often two or three at most.
The beginning of the play starts at a very early POINT OF ATTACK.
By the end of the first page or the top of the second the argument or conflict has been presented.
The play usually has only one conflict and one plot line.
There is not much exposition. By the middle of the first page, exposition has been stated.
The end of the play falls very close to the climax. Only a few lines are devoted to resolution.
Most plays deal with the exceptionally brief, but powerful moment in a character's life.