Producing a Play tips

Here is an email I sent to a friend who had asked me advice on what I have learned after doing plays over the years:

I have been seeking more and more to bring strong principles into plays:  what they practice becomes a part of who they are.  The play becomes a part of them, and even if they are playing the villain, they feel the message during rehearsal as the evil plays opposition to the good.

I have not had a lot of luck finding plays.  I have written practically all the plays I have directed.  The only one that I did not adapt or write was "The Very Best Christmas Pageant Ever."  I was new back to the community, was told what a wonderful play it was, and took it on without reading it.  (I would have changed it...there was a lot of rudeness and sarcasm that I didn't like.)

I have taken "classics" (personal choice) and adapted them to plays.  A good source of inspirational stories is the Book of Virtues.  Perhaps you could google play adaptations of those stories?

I have mixed feelings on Shakespeare.  There are great messages and questions posed through some of his works.   I feel that he also often strongly presents the negative effects of bad morals and leaves it for the audience to interpret.  Many of the adaptations of his plays tend to emphasize the secular/relationship part of his works, leaving out the great one-liners that are so often quoted in conference.  If you can find parts of his plays that bring these great moral dilemmas to the front and where the characters stand up for what is good, that is where I would start.  I feel some of his plays are pretty trivial (the comedies) and are funny, but really don't do more than entertain.  However, perhaps that is because I need to read them more deeply.  I do not claim to be any type of expert in that area.   :)

Just a re-cap/checklist of what I learned doing plays:
1) What do I want my youth to come away feeling? (William Tell: courage in standing up for what is right; strong family connections)
2) Try to know the actors and actresses: some are great at memorizing but not great at expressing themselves or speak quietly; some are fantastic at acting things out but really struggle to memorize...things like that.  Then give them appropriate parts.  It is fine to have a lead role who has a lot of short lines :).
3)  I wrote William Tell knowing the actors I would have. I could picture them saying their lines, fitting timidity with inherent shyness and solid character with steady personalities, etc.  I wasn't perfect at it, but felt I was able to allow their natural personalities to accentuate their parts.
4) Make most lines just one sentence.  Try not to have duplicate seeming sequences (like I accidentally did with the "family telling the story" out front.  They had a hard time remembering which similar line to speak :)...).
5) Don't have long stretches when people are just standing around.  Try to think of actions that "background people" could be doing while perhaps some of the dialogue is not on them.
6) Simple scenery
7) Have the parents commit up front to help in different areas: many hands make light work!  I have attached the areas where people helped me.
8) Give them the scripts at least a month before the first rehearsal.  Be clear that they have to have their lines memorized by a certain time (I had it the second rehearsal, using the first one as a dry run to give them the feel of it for the next week).  Just tell them that you may have to have someone else take some of their lines or just take them out.   It may seem harsh, but if you do not, you will spend the entire seasons with scripts in their faces and not be able to work on the presentation or acting skills.  Memorization is do-able at home.  If you do it this way, you can have the play done, start to finish in 8 weeks (we did 9 and then took a week off).  Even then, I think we could have cut out a week of rehearsals and done 7 weeks.  If you rehearse for too long, they get bored with it and cannot keep up their energy and enthusiasm for it and the rehearsals feel like a waste of time.
9) We put together that little audio cd for them to listen to, which also helped (and was surprisingly fun to put together!).
10) Have the building for performing reserved up front and the schedule to the parents along with the script.  There is nothing worse than having to send out "last minute changes" and hoping everyone can make it happen! (And you, as a parent, know how frustrating it is on the other end, I am sure!)

11) I reserved 3 hours for performance at the library to accomodate set-up and take down, although the 2 hours for the last one wasn't bad.  I liked the length of 30 minutes for this age.  45 minutes should be the limit.  They simply cannot keep the energy up for a full hour, I feel, at this age.

Anyway, hope this helps.  It was so fun to spend our rehearsals working on facing the audience, developing personality into their characters, work on volume and diction, and just give them a change to make the transitions smooth.  Another thing I learned was to try and get the props there a little earlier for them to practice with so it is not so awkward come stage time.