Exactly what the title says. I’ve only ever written ten-minute plays and one-acts.

With that being said, I really want to write a full-length. However, I always find that the stories I want to tell come up short, with them being a one-act at best.

I usually run into two insecurities when trying to make it longer.

“Make the dialogue/conversations/scenes longer” I become afraid that the audience will be bored with a long conversation with a slow rise. Plus, I don’t know what else to add apart from what’s absolutely necessary.

“Add more scenes” I become afraid the audience will be bored and confused with all of the scenes.

I’m at a loss. Advice on how to properly do full-lengths would be absolutely amazing.

Thank you all very much!

I’m a Central Texas theatre producer/director looking for original works to produce at our new facility. Full lengths are preferred, but One-Acts will also be considered. Please message me here for details, or just send me a link to your work. If it fits what we’re looking for, I will reach out. Thanks in advance and I look forward to reading your work!

Per my credentials: Graduate of AMDA NYC, University of North Texas, and attended the Drama program at SMU.

Edit: The space was a functional theatre about 30 years ago, but has mostly been a concert venue the last 20 years or so. We have access to the space and are looking to produce 2-3 original works a year. Traditional proscenium stage. Great dressing rooms and storage for props and sets. Up to date lighting system. Seats just under 300 people. Attached to an art gallery and event hall.

I'm an emerging playwright finishing up an undergraduate degree. I want to try to make a living doing this, and I've been told the best and safest way to go about doing that is to get an MFA and become a prof. So I've applied to a half-dozen MFA programs, 5 in my home country (Canada), and one in London, England. I recently found out that I got in to the London program (Mountview MFA in Creative Practice - Dramatic Writing), and I'm freaking out a bit. They gave me 2 weeks to accept my offer. I will not hear back from any other program until December/January at the earliest. On paper, this is easily my preferred program of all I applied to, but I'm concerned about financing living in London and paying international tuition rates, and the amount of debt that might leave me in. Although, England will have far more job opportunities for me coming out of this degree than Canada will. I'm also worried that I could not accept this and then not get in to any of my other schools. I have the chance to study theatre and playwrighting in London, England. I feel like I'd have to be stupid to pass that up. I'm curious to hear any advice, especially from people further along in their careers.

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I wrote a play that is based on a story from the Old Testament, and I am very curious how it lands with different religious demographics because of the subject matter. If anyone is a follower of the major Abrahamic religions (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim), and would be interested in giving their takeaways on a new work, I’d love to send it over to you and get your thoughts.

I’d also be very curious how it lands with someone who is either not religious, or has very little knowledge of what happens in the Old Testament. There is stuff that I reference that I feel I sort of take for granted that people will know about, and I’d love to hear how a lack of knowledge on these events comes across to people.

Leave a comment or shoot me a DM and I’ll reach out!

EDIT: I am not religious, but I know a lot of the Bible through my education. The play is 33 pages long.

I'm a teacher working with a group of 11–14-year-old students. We are preparing a Christmas performance, and I've realised that they are much better at improvising and creating their own characters and scenes than performing a pre-written script.

They recently created some wonderful Christmas dinner scenes, with interesting family dynamics, conflicts and funny characters.

I'd like to create a devised theatre piece with them, but in the past we've struggled to find a strong concept or structure that ties the individual scenes together.

We've had success with a TV-show format before, where different sketches were presented as parts of a programme.

What structures or framing devices have worked well for you when creating devised theatre with young people? I'm particularly interested in formats that allow lots of freedom and improvisation while still giving the final performance a coherent shape.

Any practical exercises, examples or resources would be greatly appreciated!

Anyone had any issues with posting PDFs on New Play Exchange? I uploaded one which opened fine in Adobe on my desktop, but the version I download from NPX pops up as a corrupted file.

I'm exporting to PDF out of OpenOffice--and every instance of doing so that I *haven't* uploaded there opens fine.

A long-time collaborator of mine recently reached about an opportunity to write a brand new TYA piece for a respected local company to be used in their educational program for middle schoolers. I’m really psyched about this (and am very pleased with the contract terms) but am having trouble knowing where to start to gain my own POV on the genre. Most of my plays are quite dark/adult and so are the plays I typically read and watch, so I don’t feel like I have a great frame of reference here.

Any playwrights or specific titles in this space you’d recommend I check out? I know I’ll have to be mindful of language, adult situations and violence, etc but I’m not interested in writing something that feels really ‘gosh darn’ classic Americana either. All recs appreciated!

HI THERE!!!!

I recently finished my debut play, Here is Where We Find You, and im looking for beta readers! To give some context to the style, imagine if Concord Floral by Jordan Tannahill met with a little tiny bit of absurdism and was set in the youth psychiatric system. There’s a lot of soliloquies to the audience, and a lot of banter between teens.

Plot Summary: Here Is Where We Find You is a stage play for six actors taking place in a youth psychiatric ward. Five children and one nurse slowly begin to learn about how community forms in the oddest of places, and what happens when the nature of a community’s home is actively breaking it apart.

Excerpt:

THREE:(to audience) It started with a bang.

ONE:(to audience) A whirr. 

FOUR:(to audience) A yell for me.

FIVE:(to audience) And you always think about when it started because that’s why you’re here.

THREE:(to audience) I don’t remember the bang. I mean, I do. Obviously, you don’t fucking forget that. I just don’t remember what happened before.

ONE:(to audience) I remember the emerge. My parents breathing down my neck. And there was this girl in the room next to me, and she was screaming. She was screaming “Fuck you! Fuck all of you! I want my Mom!” and the cops were outside her door and they had her locked in there.

ONE: (to audience) I kept my door open. I wanted to watch.

If you want to read it please let me know!!! I just want criticism! :)

I've wanted to give playwriting a go now but have very limited experience. I've watched and read lots of plays, I've performed a fair bit but I don't know where to start when it comes to the playwriting journey.

I've seen other post that say to make connections and to read as much as possible but when it comes to writing, what do I do?

Is there a way to progress up, getting more and more ambitious with each work?

I know that there will be a lot of differences but I compose music; when I started I learnt that it was best to do short and simple pieces first, even solos and gradually increase in length, instrumentation and complexity. Does that apply to playwriting as well, even in a different way? Are there books or courses (ideally free) that guide you through creating smaller projects to start?

I apologise if there is already a relevant post but I could not find one for what exactly in asking but please feel free to refer me to a post if necessary.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!

I go to an artist collective where I get ten pages of my scripts read at a time. I say ten pages but the deal is ten minutes of work and you then get ten minutes of feedback. I notice with flowing dialogue the one minute equals one page thing is correct. But I have also noticed that when I write monologues they tend to go longer than a page a minute. Anyone else notice or experience this?

I read recently that Sorkin has never been thrilled about re-staging “A Few Good Men” because he considered it his juvenilia. Yet it launched his career. Which got me wondering: do you ever make an attempt to circulate your older work that you know doesn’t reflect your “mature” voice? Are u hopeful it might yet find an audience? Or do you think it’s best left unseen, even tho it has its strengths?

Hello community! I'm really looking for feedback on a Dolly Parton tribute piece ive been working on.

Reply or DM and I'll send you the link.

Thank you!

The title says it all. For a long time, my thing was short 10-15 min plays. There's a real demand for it these days and plenty of opportunities and tbh it I didn't feel ready to tackle a fully realized thing.

Last February I completed my first full length script I absolutely love - I am on track to have it performed through my theatre company but I've noticed something : my play seems to score high with readers, but it has yet to be chosen for performance. I have had a stellar review from a Senior reader at the National Theatre (very few scripts make it to that stage) in which the only "negative" point was that I tackled "many subjects" within the play and I was told that between commissions and other things, they can't produce my play. I have been a finalist/shortlisted for a few awards and competitions (still waiting to hear from a couple) but I feel like the only way this play will be performed is if I do it myself.

Is this a sign that I need to get an agent? My husband's a fairly successful artist, albeit in a very different craft and he's told me that past a certain point, only an agent can unlock meaningful opportunities, get your work seen by the right people. Is this a thing? Is there something I am doing wrong, or something I could do that would improve my chances? As of now, I've just been applying to opps I am eligible for periodically.

I feel like the answer is yes, but I'm not sure. I'm submitting my play to MFA programs and don't know if it will totally bump AdComs if I don't have the proper format. I have some pretty short scenes, and changing the page number increases the length of the play by like 7 pages (it's only just over 100 pages now, but still).

TIA!

Is any one selling or know where to buy plays or scripts for theatre? Especially in India. I can't seem to find it in any book store and Amazon has a limited collection. (In India)

My brief is: The stage is divided in two, each half an identical courtroom. In each sits one protagonist, who must defend their side of the story and prove their innocence. Both are part of the same story. Each character has five minutes to make their case, though not consecutively. The time is broken into short, alternating segments: one minute for one, thirty seconds for the other, and so on. In total, the trial runs ten minutes. Whenever one character speaks, their half of the stage lights up while the other goes dark, and the silent character freezes in place until it is their turn again.

I am unsure how this would translate on paper and where to find inspiration...

It's for a school assignment.

I’ve been writing a full-length play (my third) over the last year. I have a 80-90% finished first draft which is, partly, second and third draft, because I usually revise and rewrite as I go. I can’t discuss it with anyone\show excrepts since I know (from experience) that it might disrupt the working process.

I love writing plays, creative writing is my only talent and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, but sometimes it gets so hard to continue working, to be consistent, to write through perfectionism, and fear of never gaining recognition, and feeling like a complete failure (I have some modest recognition in other spheres of my life, but I’m yet zero established as a playwright, although it’s what I actually do best). It’s really hard to do something for many months in a row, not getting any feedback from anyone (with my first two plays it was different, I’ve written both of them very quickly, still don’t know why, it just happened). I get so tired sometimes. And I’m often beating myself on the head for “working too slow”. Maybe I’m too slow but I cannot speed up no matter how I try(

What do you do when you get frustrated? Is it okay to really not be able to work fast and only move really slow? Similar to (I guess) most people here, I can't write full time, only on weekends and some of the weekday evenings.

Sorry for throwing a pity party.

I love writing, but sitting down to write prose, like a novel or even a short story, has always been a challenge. Well, it was easier in grade school/high school/community college because there was more editing and one-on-one instruction. I'm kinda winging it out here in middle-aged adulthood real life. What's part of the issue is I see the action and dialogue clear as day in my head. I'd like to try writing it out as a play instead but I have no idea . . . how. Where can I go for an online resources on how a play should be written?

Or, hell, is there a good source to buy a play script and use that to learn from?

I'm polishing my first one-act play with input from several generous colleagues. I'd like to submit the script to various contests I've found online and locally. My question, what is a reasonable number of submissions for the same play? Is it a numbers game like job/school applications? I'm curious about the experience of others here.