I co-run a drama club at my daughter’s school (is co-run even a word?) and for Christmas the school wanted us to do a small play that involved some audience participation. I offered to write the script for it thinking a) it would be more fun to have a unique script rather than something pulled out of a book somewhere that had been performed thousands of times and b) it would be a fun challenge to write.
I haven’t written a script since junior high, and this script had a lot of requirements. It had to be short and simple enough for elementary school kids ranging from grade 3 to grade 6 to perform without much rehearsal (the performance is on December 20th and we only meet for 1/2 an hour a week). It had to be Christmas related and have audience participation with ‘sound effects’. The drama club has 8 students in it, so that was a consideration, plus we wouldn’t have much, if anything, in the way of props, costumes or set.
So I wrote it — and I’m remarkably happy with it. I sent it off to the teachers who are running the drama club with me, we’ll see what they have to say, but over all I’m extremely pleased with myself. I’ve got a solid plot, some funny jokes, a good message, a Christmas theme and it fits all the requirements. Plus, it builds on the skills we’ve already been teaching the kids! Yay!
It’s called Aurora, The Littlest Reindeer and I think after some fine tuning I might even send it out to a couple publishers — which will be interesting, I never thought I’d try to market a play. It was fun to write too — very freeing to be able to occasionally just tell (via stage directions) rather than having to show everything.
I’m pretty happy with myself. Now I just have to wait and see if everyone else agrees with me about it’s awesomeness 🙂
