10 Minute Play Script Project; Adversaries/Antagonists

LAB:

Please work on your 10-minute play scripts. See previous posts for help fleshing out your ideas. Use your outline to guide you.

Since plays are based on conflict, it is important to make sure your short play includes an adversarial relationship between two or more of your characters. An adversary may be the main antagonist, or may be someone or something that attempts to destroy or defeat a character.

There are some basic types of adversaries/antagonists:

• Fierce & powerful: this antagonist will stop at nothing to destroy a character. Motivations are hate, jealousy, sociopathic tendencies, revenge, etc.
• Powerful but restrained: this antagonist could destroy your character, but has other issues to concern him/herself with. Authoritarian characters (people in power) might fall into this category. These characters may cause problems for a character, but may not always mean to destroy, or have other concerns instead of the motivations of hate, jealousy, revenge, etc.
• Fierce adversary with few resources: While this character would like to destroy another, he/she does not have the resources or power to do so completely. This character is determined, but may not have the power to destroy--but like "fierce & powerful" characters, motivations of hate, revenge, or jealousy are common.
• Restrained adversary with weak resources: characters who fall into this category cause problems for another character, but they do not cause major harm to the character. Characters like this complain or cause conflict in a scene, but they are not out to destroy other characters. They are often selfish, or acting for their own needs with little regard to the problems they are causing other characters. Teenagers are good examples. 
• Friendly foe: characters who act like friends but deliberately ruin or cause problems for a character.
• Beneficial adversary: Motivated by anger, or seeking to cause harm, a character whose actions end up helping a character fall into this category. Also, sometimes a character helps another character get what he/she wants, but it turns out to be a bad idea for that character.

Like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, characters may change their alliances--causing problems, but then ganging up on a weaker target when the opportunity presents itself. We all draw lines and create allegiances based on our beliefs, actions, political, philosophical, religious, personal reasons. 

Use the handout to develop your adversaries and create conflict in your 10-minute play.

If you need a little break to stretch your brain, try reading The Mystery of Irma Vep or watching this preview for the play from the Kansas City Repertory Theater.

• The Play That Goes Wrong (Royal Variety Performance)
• Come & Go (by Samuel Beckett)
• How to Write a 10-Minute Play (play)
• The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year (by John Guare, part 1) & (part 2)

HOMEWORK: Complete The Mystery of Irma Vep and read the handout on the Ridiculous Theater Company. There will be a quiz.