Hey, as someone writing a bank robbery/hostage situation drama, I was wondering is anyone else here is writing something that one might not typically think of as suitable for the stage?

I've always found it really difficult to find plays that are really unusual - in what ways are you making your story unique

Last year's stageplay script was/is a campy, modern-day "sort of" murder mystery, with a body count of 3 (out of 6 characters). Two of those murders occur onstage in full view of the audience and involve 1) multiple gunshot wounds and 2) a tumble over a balcony (theoretically off a cliff). The mystery comes not in the who-dunit aspect, but the why-did-they, with tons of twists and a surprise ending.

The whole time I was writing it, I kept thinking, good Lord, how am I ever going to sell this to a theater? It's definitely not your typical play. But I had a blast, and I'm moving forward with it - it's being read by actual theater actors next month, so I'll get their input on what works and what doesn't and go from there with the rewrites.

I figure if people just wrote the kinds of plays most companies put on, theater would be awfully boring. Why not take a chance? Your idea sounds really interesting - I'd love to see how it would actually work.

I've had a few plays produced, and I've always thought that being unable to present something on stage was more a failure of imagination than a limitation of the medium. Go for it!

I think most plays are 'unusual' in one way or another - I'm trying to write a short, one-act play for my local company. They often hold one-act play nights where they perform two or three comedies, so I'm hoping I can sell them my idea. It's a very small place, more like a family than a company, so I have very distinctive ideas of who might audition for the roles I write, and how good a job they'll do.

I wanted something that related to my generation, and really, everyone. So I wrote a comedy about a sullen teenage girl who fakes her death in order to move out of home, away from her respectable middle-aged parents. The parents are fusty and old-fashioned, and the girl, Amy, is a sullen, spoilt girl, so everyone's at fault, really. The main scene of the play is Amy's 'funeral' where her friends try to convince her (over the phone) to take pity on her grief-stricken parents and come back. She, typically, refuses.

Er, I have no idea what happens next. But do you class that as an unusual idea? (nervous glance around) Don't tell me it's already been done.

Writing Status: "Exposition? What exposition?"

Nah, sounds awesome.

I think it's definitely pretty original, interesting but not overly weird, very workable.

Sounds good!

I've also got specific people in mind for roles. I'm an acting student. Myself and my friends are setting up our own theatre company and I'm hoping to maybe direct.

Sounds fine! I do feel that nothing is too weird for the stage, after a good few hours listening to the Dubliners songs I came up with a script about four Irish ex soliders from WW2 who fought for England but didn't get any sort of reward for doing so, so they don't have a home, the whole play is set in their little makeshift camp and shows all they go through together how they interact with each other and the people who also occupy the camp, still to work the ins and outs but yeah

As mentioned above, the crazy stuff will find a way of being done on stage. I've been reading many a script lately that seems impossible to stage. But then I see a cast list for the first production so I know somebody somewhere did it!

Well...once upon a time (in the 60's, probably) I saw a movie on TV where this artist, seething over lack of public appreciation of his works, staged his own death based on the belief that art of any kind often sells better after the demise of the creator thereof...When his friend (who was in on the joke) began keeping all the resultant money and enjoying the publicity for himself, the artist, in revenge, somehow got his friend convicted of murdering him. It was set in Paris; there was a near-execution by guillotine at the end of the movie (it was, after all, a comedy) but other than that the details mostly elude me.

There are so many difficulties involved in people staging their own deaths for ulterior motives--wait, that's redundant; staging one's own death would ALWAYS be for ulterior motives, right?--that I am sure a lot of mileage could be gotten out of it.

I'm setting mine on an epically large and mega-leveled ship, if that counts. xD`

I haven't decided which idea of mine that has been languishing in purgatory for years is finally going to receive a proper draft during Script Frenzy, though both of the front runners would be very unusual for the stage.

For one thing, they are both horror musicals. While recent attempts have been made to launch horror musicals in NYC (ie: Frankenstein (off-Broadway), Evil Dead (off-Broadway), Lestat (Broadway), another Frankenstein (off-Broadway), etc.), none of them, IMO, found the right balance between score and book. They were either very moody sounding without a lot of scares, or very scary stories with distracting song breaks.

The one idea is a haunted house chamber musical. The other idea is a zombie outbreak musical almost entirely set in one room of a hospital. The first idea has loads of techy elements to sell the right mood for a haunted house. The second idea is all about suggestion with very little zombie action on stage.

The dark horse is a science-fiction musical, an even more unusual genre for musical theater. I'm struggling to think of a straight sci-fi show that went past a short festival run or publicized workshops any time in the recent past in the NYC/NJ region.

The project I'm planning to start for Script Frenzy isn't entirely unusual. It's a dark romantic comedy about an accident prone man whose life is manipulated by a cluster of bored gods and goddesses. I suppose it's a bit different for a musical, but not especially different. The main way it's unique is how the main character responds to his problems. He decides to exaggerate everything, and give the gods and goddesses a spectacular show. Eventually he becomes relatively detatched from his own suffering, and is able to find the humor in everything he goes through.

However, I did just write a stage play about the aftermath of a zombie attack. It started with an action sequence, too. I found it was a lot of fun to write.

The one I'm planning to write is about a preteen who goes on a Fantasy Adventure. Buts its funny. There's magic and sword battles and stuff.

M

I think mine may top all. My play is set in a bathroom. I was thinking one day about all the gossip that goes on in a public bathroom (especially high school) and thought it would make a really interesting play. Oh, and edgewritermom, that movie sounds like a play that Mark Twain wrote (that no one really ever knows about). I read it and it was hilarious, but there was nothing about a guillotine. But it was the same basic concept. You go, guys. I love unusual plays.

Someone's beaten you to the concept. Last year, in NY, a Scottish (I think) company staged a three-person script that took place in a public restroom -- like, *in* an *actual* restroom, not onstage -- in the subway system. The audience was limited to 12, and it was, by all accounts, one of the weirded productions of the season.

what a great conversation!

I've always played with settings and genre with my work. When I was still going to the University of Iowa, I was working on writing a ten minute play for the Undergrad 10 minute play festival, and I thought that I wanted to write a play in which the setting was a pair of weight bearing rope swings. And I did it. It got produced, more than once, and published later on. Sometimes all you need is just something different to make the writing flow, you know?

I'm playing around with a science fiction play, but sci fi isn't really a genre you see on stage. I know of 'R.U.R.' but that's about the only one. Anyone know of any others?

yes, i completely agree.

STARSTRUCK, an off broadway musical from the early 80s.

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET, by Gore Vidal. Dont bother with the wretched movie with Jerry Lewis: the play is *far* better.

ROCKABYE HAMLET, which opened the Gershwin Theatre in NY in 1977: a futuristic version of Hamlet. The duel was supposed to take place in outer space, so the duelists were leaping about on trampolines (Im not making that up).

Last year, in NY, a Scottish (I think) company staged a three-person script that took place in a public restroom -- like, *in* an *actual* restroom, not onstage -- in the subway system.

That is by far the strangest thing I have ever heard of. It sounds awesome, though. And that Macbeth in space definately sounds worth watching.

Well, uh, have any of you ever heard of Hetalia?

(For those of you too lazy to google it, it's like history only with people instead of countries.)

I'm essentially doing Hetalia: The Musical, WW2 variation.

It's going to be... interesting.

I have read scripts that call for everything from the sound of trees growing, to characters with bodies made of vegetables.
Don't be afraid to challenge people.

I remember reading earlier this year "The Rhinoceros," where at the end there's a bunch of rhinos singing and progressively becoming less ugly and more and more beautiful, as the mc's perspective shifts. I remember distinctly wondering how one would present such a thing, so an audience could understand the message being conveyed.

I suppose anything's possible with enough imagination and a tiny bit of craziness...I'm trying my hand at a post-apocalyptic setting (not for SF though) and I'm really curious as to how it'll turn out, so far I've no clue. My sister's doing the music. Should be interesting at the very least.
Last year, a group and I wrote a play where two guys get carjacked and left out on some desolate highway, eventually they get picked up by the cops and taken to jail. We put it on with no props other than stools; it was an interesting experience, to say the least.

Well, in the interests of debate, I'm writing a play about a university student who wants to take part in ponyplay but cannot due to the sexually restrictive society he lives in.

It will not be a comedy.

One of mine has to do with an angel coming to get help from a teen to stop a murderer. It hasn't been decided if I'm creating the murderer, or just going to base this off something I know a bit of info about already. There are two angels that no one will see but the MC, and it's going to have to have violence on stage. I'll probably want music in there and angels will have to fly. Mine isn't hard, the plot is just what's interesting.

I'm writing a musical in which the two principal characters (sisters) only see each other twice a year, and so most of the action takes place apart from eachother, on separate parts of the stage. Much of the dialog between the sisters will be via cell phone and the minor characters will be families and frinds of the sisters.

I think Politics is probably not an unusual genre for a play, but it is for a musical, which is what I'm writing - spoofing some of the people in our (Britain's) current government, adding characters in, a fun plot and loads of ABBA and other old songs being completley rewritten :D

Just remember that as the writer, its not your responsibility to put something on the stage. Thats the directors job. You should be able to write anything you can dream up and handball it forward to someone else to make sense of.

If you've ever heard of the British writer Sarah Kane, she writes plays with sunflowers bursting up through the floorboards and people being dismembered onstage and a tsunami of rats rolling across the stage and they get performed regularly. You shouldn't worry for a second about whether or not it's performable - it ain't your problem.

The problem with the stage is the age old issue of decorum. As a theater student I hate ablosultely with a captial H, Hate decorum. As a student I understand that if we didn't have it in place there would be a bunch of potty humor on stage (oddly enough Avenue Q won a Tony with its potty humor and vulgar lyrics)
People are afraid to put out things that violate the "decorum" norm in theater. However I say take the risk. I am currently working on a crime drama for Script Frenzy about a girl who kills a young man. Its established in the begining that she does it but it's more of a why she did it. I am writing it to were you see the actual murder take place on stage. Its not graphic or anything but still most of the time you don't see people getting murder on stage.
I say go for it!!! Try to throw something new at the theater community you might just suceed!

I want to make fight club into a musical. If that's not unconventional I don't know what is.

My Scenzy this year is actually really stage friendly though. I try to keep all my stuff minimum set minimum special effects. That way its just all about the funnies.

You forgot the greatest rock opera of all: HAMLET IN SPACE. I kid you not. It's German (so very German), and at some point got renamed (incorrectly, in my opinion) Hamlet in Rock.

Well, if you want unusual genre, I'm going for a strange twist in fantasy/realism. A woman at the end of her rope is about to commit suicide when Death apears and offers to switch places with her.

I'm hoping fun and excitement ensue...so far Death has an amazing sense of humor. Heh. And I'm only at page 7--we'll see what happens halfway through the play. (This is what I get for seeing a stage play that one of the Creative Writing professors wrote at my college.)