Category: Full length plays

The Guyer Girls will open soon in the Black Hills of South Dakota

The Black Hills Community Theatre of Rapid City, South Dakota is opening performance dates for my play, The Guyer Girls, beginning March 31st.  

 

Writing down my memories of my mother telling me these wild stories about herself and her four sisters when they were teenagers in the 1920s in a tiny town

Mama, Violet, Gladys, Ivah, Youngest sisters

in the Pacific Northwest was a joyful trip down memory lane and a perfect genre to preserve her stories.  When I was a child, thankfully, I knew all of my aunties as older women. It’s a special event when I am notified by Samuel French, my publisher, that this particular play has been licensed to produce by a theatre group.

Synopsis:

Critics have described The Guyer Girls as a cross between Little Women and I Remember Mama. From the opening moments when Ivah cuts Violet’s eyebrows off, this story romps through the sibling antics and rivalry of a large family. The first act takes place as the young teenage girls are growing into lovely women.

The five sisters grown: (left>right) LaVerne, Violet, Gladys, Ivah and Lillias.

 

(left>right) Tish Evans as LaVerne, Carol Cameron as Violet, LaRee Mayes as Mama, Wendy Lowe as Lillas, and Marilyn Hovland as Ivah

In a series of family stories set in the 1920s, we enjoy the girls’ hilarious pranks, antics, joys and humiliations. There is laughter in abundance. Tears, love, and sibling rivalry as these four delightful sisters grow up under the guidance of their matriarch, ‘Mama’. A prestigious marriage, a female pro-basketball player, and a run away to Alaska, these young women couldn’t be more diverse. Fast forward to the 1940s. The sisters are adults, starting their own families and Pearl Harbor has just been attacked.

The Guyer Girls are the children of Sophia and Levi Guyer who migrated to America and then moved out west. The stage play is a rich tapestry of an American family spanning three decades and based upon the true story of the Guyer family. 4f.
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March-Apr:   Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION  April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard 

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

 

How To Write a Play Journal is Now in Hardback

This beautiful journal/handbook is now available in Hardcover. Here’s a little of what you can expect inside. Plus hundreds of blank pages for your own writings and plans for a stage play.

1.  Format is very important.    If you submit your new play to anyone they will not read it if it is not in the proper format. There is software out there that offer auto-format but I found them lacking.   The character’s name is centered. Blocking (action) is indented and placed in parentheses. Setting (indent once), Rise  (indent once) and Dialogue is far left. Double space between character’s name and first line of dialogue.  Blocking (action): is placed below the character’s name in parentheses. (indent x 3).  A ‘beat’ is a dramatic pause to enhance the pace of the speech and is placed in the dialogue where you wish the actor to pause for a beat or two. 

2. Each page represents approximately one minute of time on stage.  So if you have a play that is 200 pages long, that won’t work.  Audiences aren’t going to sit for more than one and a half hours unless you are providing a circus, a fire drill, sex, and an earthquake.  You should keep your full length script to about 100 pages which equals 1.6 hours of stage time.  For a one act divide that by 2.  For a ten minute play your script should be from 10-15 pages. These times and figures are debated by others but this has been my experience as an actor/director/writer.

3.  Leave lots of white space on the page.  One day when your play is being produced, actors will need a place to make notes in the script during rehearsal.  This is a sample of an actor’s (mine) working script. The    
actor usually ‘highlights’ their lines and writes the director’s blocking in the margins. (in pencil, as blocking frequently changes)

4.  The blocking is indented, in parentheses, and directly below the character’s name.  This is where the playwright gives the characters instructions on when and where to move.  But, keep it short and sweet.  Remember there will be a director who has their own ideas of where he/she wants their actors to be.  Be aware of costume changes in your writing.  An actor can’t exit stage left and enter stage right, seconds later, if you haven’t written in the time it will take for them to accomplish a costume change.

5.  Your script has to work on a stage.  If your story takes place in more than one locale, you have to be aware of the logistics of set changes. So keep it simple to start.  If you are ambitious in your setting buy a book on set design to research if your set is feasible.  There are some wonderful ‘envelope’ sets that unfold when you need to change the scene.  But you have to consider the budget; would a theatre have the money to build it? Always a worry.

6.  Dialogue: Now here’s the sometimes hard part:  everything you want the audience to know about the story and the characters, is
conveyed in the dialogue.  Unlike a short story or a novel, where you can write as much description as you’d like, a play script has none of that.  NO description. 

Here is a Sample of formatting your script correctly.  (Click link for details.) 

Journal includes instruction on: 

How To Begin
How to Write a Play
Formatting your Play on the Page
How to write Dialogue
How to Create Rich, Exciting Characters
Designing a Set
Stage Lighting
Stage Terminology
and more…..
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BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

 

 

 

 

 

How to be Certain a Director will NOT choose your Play

Recently I was invited to read and review a new collection of three plays. There was so much WRONG with the formatting and the lack of knowledge by the playwright that I couldn’t review it without tearing it all down and asking the playwright to begin anew. But there evolved a constructive critique that might help other new writers. 

Example back cover

Back cover should not be blank with a graphic design. Don’t waste this space.
1. Use this space as an opportunity to grab the buyer/director. List titles and short synopses of your plays. Count gender and following synopsis type this: 1m. 4f. (indicating one male and four females.
2. One line tags
3. A short bio of you

Pg1. First page: Title of play/s
Pg.2: Copyright notice
Pg 3:  list of play titles and Pg # they start on.

In the first few pages you should have a Contents (list) with the tile of each play and the page number it begins. Make it as easy as you can for the director to find the play and the list of characters Because this dictates whether the director can use your play or not depending on age of character and gender. Always keep in mind that men are harder to cast.

On whatever page a new play starts it should begin with the title and the list of characters.

Be certain, you as the playwright, understand what constitutes a full length play. a One Act play, and a Ten Minute Play.  If your plays are preachy and  esoteric it will be a hard sell to a director.

The end of a play is indicated with one word, centered: CURTAIN

‘Black out‘ and ‘End of Scene‘ are no longer used. The director will understand when a new scene begins. The next page demonstrates to the reader that a new scene is beginning. ‘Act’ and ‘Scene’ should be centered.

CHARACTERS names and blocking should be centered on page; NO underline.

If you find yourself writing a soliloquy or a monologue in a scene, break it up by having other characters insert dialogue in your speech. It then becomes less preachy and more dynamic.

Be certain YOU know the difference between a Ten Minute Play, a Full Length play (with two acts) and a One Act Play. The first act in a full length play is longer than the second act. Full length plays are about 100 pages/minutes. And no one ever uses an Act III unless your plays is over two hours or closer to 3 hours long. Also, a no-no. Remember the rule of thumb is one minute per page. This varies based on how ‘busy’ the blocking is as that takes time too. It is permissible that a 10 minute play might go over but never more than 18 to 20 minutes.

The first few pages of the book should be simple and convey the correct information. Keep it simple.  The title of your book  should be on the 1st page of your book. The next page [on the left] should be your copyright page. On the right should be your table of contents (centered)
Title with page numbers. (justified left)

On the page number of the play, the title should be on the 1st page. (odd numbered page, right side) the next page (odd numbered) should be the list of characters. The blocking and description of how the play should be produced does not need to be too detailed. Remember this is the job of the director to interpret the playwright’s Play.

Examples:
Link, How to Format a play: https://www.writeratplay.com/2018/01/15/how-to-format-your-self-published-stage-play/

When the formatting is not industry-standard, I have seen more than one director throw the book/script into the ’round file’.
Look at other scripts on line for guidance.  
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A NEW Children’s Play~~Book Give-a-Way

              CLIMATE CHANGE. ENDANGERED SPECIES have all come to the Fabled forest. In this sixth script in the series, Emma, Donald, Thomas, Cheets and Stare all return (to the story) to meet their visitors and try to help them. 

~~THE FIRST THREE DIRECTORS/TEACHERS THAT CONTACT ME WILL RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF THE NEW SCRIPT. 

Synopsis: 

This is a fable about climate change and endangered creatures. Two sisters Aardvarks arrive in the Fabled Forest by accident. Their travel agent, Time Portals to Your Next Adventure, malfunctions and instead of Australia, they are plopped down in Cheets’ clearing in the forest. Here they meet Donald, the fairie, Cheets, the elf, Emma, the farm-girl and all the creatures that inhabit the fabled, mystical forest. Agnes and Annie are so ugly they’re cute. With their jaunty hats atop their weird heads, with their rabbit-like ears and short elephant type snouts, Emma and Donald are entranced. They set about helping the two aardvarks to complete their trip to Australia while helping other endangered species.

The Aardvarks and the Painted Wild Dogs are endangered species and it is a dangerous lifestyle. In this fable children learn more about climate change wiping out habitat and about other endangered species and how we humans can protect them.

 

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Emma ~~ A young earthling girl
Stare ~~ A rhetorical owl
Donald ~~ A young fairie

Cheets ~~ a rambunctious elf
Patsy ~~ A large banana spider
Agnes & Annie ~~ the sister Aardvarks

Thomas ~~ the sea-faring sea turtle
Bertie, the bookworm ~~ the resident reading teacher

Fergus ~~ The royal engineer

Mr. Moseyalong ~~ Papa of the Painted Dogs
Mrs. Moseyalong ~~ Mama
Mic, Jax, Roger, Zeke and Serengeti ~~ the Puppies

No child need be turned away, there can be non-speaking roles as forest creatures and fairies.

TS. “We created a book cover representing the future time when our planet dies and everything is black and white. With a spot of color called hope.”
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Available now!