Help Preparing/Writing Your Historical Play

Writing a historical play:

5 Lessons Learnt In Writing a Historical Play (video)
Try your own beginning research by choosing one of these areas and learning about it. Take notes of things, people, or places from that time period that you find interesting.

• Elizabethan Period
• Elizabethan Period & Historical Figures & Events
• American Colonialism
• Famous African Americans
• British/English Historical Figures
• Ancient Greek Figures
• Historical Asian Figures
• Famous Egyptians
• Famous Hispanic Leaders/Events
• Famous Female Leaders
• Famous historical leaders
• Chinese Dynasties
• Roman Historical Figures
• Historical Periods & Important Events
• Lesser Known American History
• Famous Inventors
• Famous Artists

Once you have chosen a time period for your setting, consider HOW you will plot your story. How many scenes will you write? How may you combine time and scenes to tell your story? Consider:

Plot: (what happens on stage) off stage is part of the story, not part of the plot

a.     Pick a historical person, or set your play in a historical time period. Your play may deal with a fictional protagonist(s) in an otherwise historical setting. 

b.     Ask: Where would you start a play? Each writer will start a plot somewhere different. Write a short play with that plot in mind. Example:

1. Hamlet can be told from a variety of plots. Where we start Hamlet suggests a different story as varied as the writer writing the play.
2. Fortinbras, by Lee Blessing, for example, starts his play at the end of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet could also be a minor character (for example in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead)
3. Desdemona by Paula Vogel tells the story of Desdemona in Othello: plot can be told from the perspective of a different character. 
4. The shorter the play, the closer to the climax you will need to start your story/plot.
5. Introduce some theatrical conventions: 

Theatrical Conventions:

• Masks
• Cross-gender (costume/casting)
• Asides
• Soliloquy
• Stillness/silence/pauses
• Use of a narrator (seen in "memory plays" like The Glass Menagerie or Brighton Beach Memoirs
• Synecdoche (part represents the whole)
• Suggested scenery (consider the set in Driving Miss Daisy, for example)
• Costumes & props
• Multiple casting (one actor plays several roles)
• Lights or lighting changes
• Soundscapes/sound effects
• The fourth wall; Breaking the fourth wall (addressing the audience)
• Flash forward, flashback, slow motion, freeze
• Tableau
• Montage
• On-stage deaths; stage fights
• Physical theater; mime
• Unities of time, place, or action
• Transformation of time, character, place, or through props
• Songs
• Choruses
• Heightened language; unrealistic speaking patterns
• Placards, signs, and multimedia