83. Writing a Play

Last week, the English Theater group met to write a play for this year's English Theater Competition.  The idea was to write a play based around the theme "My Choice, My Future," but it wasn't going well.  It seemed like the students had endless patience but limited creativity.  

After three hours of brainstorming (and relentless pushing, on my part), five students eventually developed five different plays:

• "A Boy Who Takes Drugs and Makes a Bad Choice"
• "A Girl Who Drinks Alcohol and Makes a Bad Choice"
• "A Girl Who Makes a Bad Decision and then because of her Bad Choices later Becomes a Prostitute"
• "A Boy Who Takes Drugs and Makes the Bad Choice to Steal from His Family"
• "A Boy Who Goes to the Witch Doctor and Chooses to Take Drugs"

Hmmm.  

Then, as a group, we then voted on the best of the five selections.   The verdict?

"A Boy Who Takes Drugs and Makes the Bad Choice to Steal from His Family."

(Yes, that is the actual title of our play.  As you can see, it's a work in progress.)

On Friday of this week, I sat down with the winning idea-maker to sketch out the details of his play.  With his permission, I then penned and typed the finished product.  I made sure to add an introduction, a plot, and a resolution which, until that point, had all been conspicuously absent.  

Today, the group met in the school's computer lab.  I originally meant to print a few copies of the play to organize a read-through, but there wasn't any ink.  Improvising, we all just clumped together to read the play on the school's five working computers.  Then, the students started choosing parts and practicing their English.  

It was terrible (and I mean really bad), but the students are so excited!

The competition will be held on September 28, which means that we still have four weeks to prepare.  I think it's actually going to work.

Doing a silent read-through of the play

Choosing parts

And if nothing else, my students all got to touch a computer today!  For six out of ten of them, it was for the very first time!

It was a busy and meaningful day.