26/09/18 Papa Tango

I was really excited for today's lesson as I couldn't wait to start writing! Today Papa Tango came in to help us write our 10 minute play. We introduced ourselves and told her our favourite film or TV series. She told us to try and include elements that makes us love them in our play.

Daniella wanted to tweak our story line slightly by changing Princess Diana to Madeline McCann as she thought Princess Diana would be too old to go to a costume party. However, both me and Katie thought this would be too complicated to change at this stage as we didn't have a lot of time. We also couldn't think of a motive for someone getting her assassinated as there would be a massive reward for delivering her alive as well as national praise. There were way too many plot holes that we didn't have time to patch up.

Before we started working we had a new member joining our group. JP was absent from yesterday's lesson, so he was given to us. At first we were worried as we had only written three characters and our play didn't need any more. I then realised we could give him the role of the mysterious man on the other end of the phone. We were eager to start writing as we came up with loads of ideas yesterday. Our play is 10 minutes long so we needed to write 10 pages. __________ told us about the correct structure of a play. A play is split into 5 acts and ideally follow this structure:

1.  Exposition/set up
2. Build up 
3. Climax 
4. Consequence
5. Resolution 

As we were brainstorming ideas for our script _____ came round every now and then to ask us questions about our script. She asked who our protagonist was, their conflicting traits, their wants and obstacles preventing them. Out of our four characters (Michelangelo, Prince Philip, Chardonnay and Chanel/Diana) our protagonist is Michelangelo. Conflicting traits add depth to a character and make them loveable. Many of our favourite characters have conflicting personality traits for example the protagonist of Luther, DCI John Luther. He is an officer of the law who wants justice but often breaks the law to achieve this. Regarding Michelangelo, he is charismatic and charming but also impatient and rude. For Michelangelo his ‘wants’ are to get his job done quickly and get paid. However, there are obstacles preventing him from these wants. Chardonnay flirts with him all night which keeps him from getting to his target;  he ends up killing the wrong girl; and finally his real target gets away.

As we continued writing we were stopped to play a game. As groups we had to guess the five things that are crucial for a play. We got four out of the five. The five key things that need to be included are:

1. Scenes
2. Beats/pauses (moments of silence for effect or to show that a character is thinking)
3. Dialogue
4. Stage directions
5. Characters

Before we finished for the day _______ asked us to think of a question our audience should be asking in the first act. This question should be answered by act five. Our question was ‘What does she (Chanel) know?’. The audience should question what knowledge she posses that is resulting in her being assassinated.

I ended today feeling really pleased with the work we produced today. We wrote the first act and planned the other four. I left the lesson full of ideas of where we could take our play.