One Minute Plays

A Practical Guide to Tiny Theatre

Steve Ansell, Rose Burnett Bonczek, Steve Ansell, Rose Burnett Bonczek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317199564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

Can you really write a play that lasts a minute?

The one minute play offers a unique challenge to actors, directors and writers: how do you create a whole world, where actors have room to perform and where audiences have a true experience all in 60 seconds?

One Minute Plays: A Practical Guide to Tiny Theatre demystifies the super-short-form play, demonstrating that this rich, accessible format offers great energy and variety not only to audiences but to everyone involved in its creation and performance. This handbook includes:

• An anthology of 200 one-minute plays selected from the annual Gone in 60 Seconds festival.
• A toolbox of exercises, methodologies and techniques for educators, practitioners and workshop leaders at all levels.
• Tips and advice on the demands of storytelling, inclusivity and creative challenges.
• Detailed practical information about creating your own minute festival, including play selection, running order, staging and marketing.

Drawing on a wealth of experience, Steve Ansell and Rose Burnett Bonczek present an invaluable guide for anyone intrigued by the art of creating, producing and performing a one minute play.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Writing for short form theatre

Why a one minute play?

A good one minute play is like a shooting star, it burns bright, and then it’s gone. … but it remains in the memory forever.

(Jan Wilson, Gi60 director)

The one minute play is the theatrical equivalent of a classic rock’n’roll 45. It makes its point quickly, it’s irreverent, it comes in many flavors, it doesn’t always follow the rules, and most importantly, it’s got something for everybody. The history of popular music and the pop charts is filled with humor, pathos, love, politics, novelty, one-hit wonders, and of course, legendary talents. The melting pot of creativity, diversity, and freedom that typifies the pop charts’ hey-days, where Elvis Presley’s visceral Hard Headed Woman can sit happily alongside The Purple People Eater, can also be seen in a one minute theatre festival.

Popular music was initially dismissed as little more than a fad for the newly invented “teenagers” in the 1950s. Those (now quite mature) teenagers never stopped listening, and popular music has become the most enduring, accessible, and ubiquitous form of creative expression in Western society. This short form of (musical) expression, “the three minute single,” can handle the most serious and the most nuanced of subjects as well as the most esoteric and silly. When Neil Young penned Ohio in June 1970 as a response to the student shootings at Kent State University, he didn’t write a book or pen a letter to Congress; instead, he managed to shine a light on a dark moment in American history and articulate the anger and despair of a nation in just under three minutes. No symphony or concerto could have made a more powerful or singular emotional statement.

Steve

When I heard Billy Bragg sing St Swithin’s Day for the first time, it said more to me about love and heartbreak in two and a half minutes than any opera or theatrical musical could ever hope to do. Young and Bragg’s vehicle for expression is “popular” music, so called because it's open to everyone and was therefore viewed, in certain quarters, as not serious. Pop music now forms an integral part of our lives.

The one minute play may never be viewed with the same reverence that popular music rightfully enjoys, but the one minute play holds the same opportunities as the pop song. Its strength lies, like that of the pop song, in its irreverence: its ability to tackle any and all subjects, no matter how high minded, surreal, metaphysical, or just downright silly.

Detractors seem keen to dismiss the one minute play as not serious and little more than a sketch show for those with limited concentration spans. When the first Gi60 festival took place in 2004, one local newspaper proclaimed from billboards in the town that “Theatre experiments with tiny plays.” The publicity was really appreciated, but using the word “experiment” somehow made it sound as if we were doing something sinister, perhaps lurking in a darkened rehearsal room armed with scissors and crazy glue ready to mutilate unsuspecting plays like the playwriting equivalent of The Island of Doctor Moreau. A few years later, a local journalist wrote an article that seemed to suggest that the one minute play was a clear indicator that theatre, and possibly society itself, was in ruins. Once again, we were reminded of popular music’s early years and society’s outrage at the “bad influence” of rock’n’roll. Seemingly, a very small play can cause very big emotions. The one minute play is brash, unapologetic, and to some the “enfant terrible” of the theatre world (we’ll take that as a compliment). Rather than dismiss the form’s detractors, we consider that their fears and concerns go a long way toward explaining the potency and power of the one minute play and, perhaps more importantly, what makes it such a vibrant and exciting form.

The most usual argument fired at short format theatre is that 60 seconds or a single page of text cannot possibly provide a platform for serious writing. This is evidenced by citing the fact that so many one minute scripts are humorous. There may be some merit in this: many one minute plays do take the narrative arc of a “joke” or a “sketch” with a single punch line. The comedy sketch is by definition a short form performance, and the classic format of a joke – “set up,” “punch line,” “tag” – can work beautifully in a one minute play format, such as Inverse Ninja Law by Russ Thorne, Slam Poetry by Dwayne Yancey, and many more. These are very funny pieces of theatre and also completely valid as “serious” writing. “Comedy is a serious business,” to quote W. C. Fields. Short form theatre, like all forms of theatre, runs the gamut of human emotions. We see tiny plays of immense beauty, pathos, tragedy, and ingenuity. Helen Elliot’s The Collective Memory of Humans, Being …, Sean Burn’s Mistah, Ruben Carbajal’s Moment Before Impact, and the poignant Stating the Obvious by Meron Langsner are all deeply moving, fully realized pieces of theatre. Tiny plays can handle emotions big and little; they can be funny or sad, deep or shallow; they can make an important point or be irreverently pointless; but then, to be fair, so can other theatrical formats, so the next question worth asking is …

Why do people write one minute plays?

My favorite thing about Gi60 is that it drives people to write, not just writers, but all kinds of people. People who might not normally attempt it, who are not necessarily from an academic background. I’m a mechanic by trade. My only college education is one writing course from Old Dominion University that I took while I was in the Navy in Virginia. But Gi60 appeals to people like me. It speaks to, and is open to everyone. All you really need is to have a story to tell, or something that you really want to say.

(Kevin Clyne, Gi60 playwright)

We have been asked that question many times over the years, and it’s an excellent starting point for understanding how to write a one minute play. Gi60 writer Kevin Clyne states his own reasons for writing a one minute play very clearly: “it drives people to write, not just writers …” The one minute play format is a great way to encourage people to start writing. Every year, the submissions for Gi60 include people with little or no previous writing experience and writers from other backgrounds who have never considered writing for the stage before. Sometimes, the freshest plays and most potent stories come from those who are new to writing. This short form is a “way in,” an achievable goal, and is a format that can be tackled by almost anybody, irrespective of age, creed, experience, or culture. It opens a door for people to more readily access and share the stories they have within: stories they may be dying to tell, but have been too daunted to write down because of the expectations of the traditional form. Our own Gi60 International One Minute Theatre Festival was created largely along these egalitarian lines. We wanted to encourage as many people, from as many backgrounds as possible, to write for the stage with the opportunity of having their work performed.

Kevin Clyne’s quote is a great example of the ability of this format to encourage and nurture new writers. In fact, his first play Nothing was featured on National Public Radio’s program The Takeaway when it featured a story on Gi60. Kevin describes how he nearly drove off the road when he heard his play on national radio; and, of course, it gave him even more encouragement to write. However, his perspective represents only a part of the picture. After more than a decade of directing one minute theatre festivals, it’s quite clear that the one minute play format appeals to writers across the spectrum. It’s easy to understand its appeal to new writers, but what does the tiny play offer the experienced writer? And why do writers, including many successful published writers, continue submitting scripts to us year after year?

Steve

I once asked a world-renowned British playwright (who shall remain nameless) if he would consider submitting a one minute play to our festival. He was kind enough to reply with a handwritten note in which he politely declined our offer, saying (and I’m paraphrasing here) that in his experience, the one minute play could be a bit of a trap, because the shorter the play, the greater the challenge to the playwright. This may very well have been simply an eloquent way of saying “thanks, but no thanks,” but it highlight’s the very real challenge a one minute play presents for an experienced writer.

For a new writer, the one minute play is the nursery slope of playwriting, easy to negotiate, not too long, and with a soft landing if you should fall. Conversely, for an experienced writer, the one minute play can be like skiing down Everest on a tea tray: a 60-second white knuckle ride with nowhere to hide, where character development, narrative structure, emotional engagement, subtext, and much more have to be explored and honed with clarity, economy, and flair in just one minute.

A one minute play is meant to stand alone and leave a single impression. A full length that leaves a single impression has most likely failed.

(Meron Langsner, Gi60 playwright)

The one minute play demands clarity: clarity of thought, clarity of idea, clarity of structure and story, and clarity of character. Starting with thought, idea, structure, and story, how can you begin to create and shape it into a play?

•Finish this single sentence: “This story is about …”

•What’s the essential conflict or problem you’re writing about? Can you compress it to the “creative math,” i.e. the “x vs. y = ”? What two forces are in opposition? Innocence vs. Corruption? Ignorance vs. Enlightenment? Illusion vs. Reality?

•What is the journey of the story itself? If the story is a road map, do we begin in one place and arrive somewhere different by the end? Does the story cycle back around and bring us – purposefully – to the same place where we began? Does your story contain journeys where characters start and finish in separate places, only meeting briefly as their journeys cross?

•What specific location does this story need to be set in? And what are the “rules” of that world of the play? Even if it’s a “magical realm” – every world of every play has its own set of rules. Define the rules of the world of your play, e.g. “In this world, the characters have the power to make time stand still.” “In this world, Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster not only exist, but prove their existence.” “In this world, the dead can freely move amon...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Authors directory
• Index