Monologue Play Draft Due; 'Night Mother

This morning, please take the first 30 minutes (until 8:30) to prepare and revise your monologue plays. These play drafts are due at 8:30.

If you finish early, please do any of the following tasks:

• Create a list of characters; or sketch out a character from that list
• Draw portraits of potential characters
• Gather ideas for new premises: write these ideas down
• Make a list of historical characters; check out their bios and research one of them for a potential play
• Take a gander at these videos:

Video #1: Top Tips
Video #2: Status Quo
Video #3: Building a Plot
Video #4: Formatting a play script (optional viewing, for those who don't understand the form)
Video #5: Tips from Dennis Kelly about Playwriting

At 8:30, we will move to the library to pick up our next play 'Night Mother. We will finish our discussion on Freud's Last Session and begin reading 'Night Mother in class.

Some notes:

• Aristotle's six elements of plays: plot, character, diction (dialogue), thought (theme), spectacle, song/music
• Conflict
• Structural Unity: all parts of the plot (exposition, rising action, turning point, climax, resolution, etc.) should work and fit together.
• Inciting Incident: the point of attack, the inciting incident forces the protagonist into the action of the play's plot.
• Major Dramatic Question (MDQ): the hook that keeps an audience interested in a play; a dramatic question that a reader/viewer wants answered.
• Major decision: A decision a character makes in the plot that creates the turning point for their character.
• The three C's: Conflict, crisis, complication: obstacles characters must face for an interesting and dramatic plot.
• Rising Action
• The dark moment/crisis: the lowest moment of a character's struggle--when all the world seems lost, the fight unbeatable, the "darkest hour before dawn" -- a stunning reversal of fortune and sense of failure.
• Deus ex machina: a contrived ending. Often one in which the characters did not have a hand in solving. (It is more interesting to see a character deal with their own problems rather than an outside force solving it for them.) literally, a "god from a machine"
• Enlightenment: When the protagonist understands how to defeat the antagonist. A revelation that begins the movement toward a climax.
• Climax
• Catharsis

Play Structure & Length
Plays come in only a few flavors structurally:
1. The Five-Act Play (popular with Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage)
2. The Four-Act Play (popular with Chekhov and Russian Modern theater)
3. The Three-Act Play (popular in the early part of the 20th century)
4. The Two-Act Play (popular now; and the preferred length of a full-length play)
5. Full length One Act Play (ex. Freud's Last Session; Night Mother, etc.) There is no intermission, the play is about the length of a film.
6. Short One Act. (Usually 15 minutes to an hour)
7. 10-minute Play (short, short plays anywhere from 3 minutes to 15). You should be familiar with these by now.

HOMEWORK: Please finish the play 'Night Mother for next class. Bring your books back with you to our next session to examine the play in more depth.