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The subject of the post kind of says it all, really. It's about OWS. My 10 minute plays tend to run way long, so I tried to keep it extra short, which I think works well with the tone. I didn't know where to write this in the stage directions, but throughout the play, both characters need to be taking minor, non-verbal actions towards getting what they want (for example, Mike could slowly try to close in on Sady, as Sady tries to find ways around him, Mike could make the occasional grab at the explosives), leading up to the climax of the play, in order to build tension. It's rather important to the play, as the words themselves are not enough to make it a compelling story. Once I start submitting it, I think I'll add that as a production note. Yay! Posting this here has already proven useful! I'm excited to see what people have to say about it. SADY: female, 20s, not from New York MIKE: male, 20s, New Yorker, should probably look like he's been outside marching and yelling at the start of the play (A small apartment in New York City during OWS. SADY is tinkering with a home-made UAV, and typing on a cheap laptop. She has been working on this for a while. There are some home-made explosives on the floor, designed to be carried by the UAV. MIKE pounds on the door. SADY checks the peephole) SADY Oh, gently caress me. (SADY starts packing the explosives into a bag, then the laptop, then shoves the airplane under her arm. This is going on while they are speaking, before MIKE comes in) Coming! Sorry! MIKE You realize you're not the only one who sleeps and showers in my apartment, right? (pause) Come on! Tanya, Sarah, Jacob, and a bunch more people were arrested. Jenny's in the hospital, and Jacob loving should be. Where the gently caress have you been by the way? (SADY opens the door. MIKE enters) SADY Jesus. I'm sorry. MIKE We're going- (sees the explosives) We're going to have a march against police violence in a few hours. You should come. SADY Yeah. Of course. I've got some stuff that I need to do first, but... y'know, when and where do we meet? MIKE Sady, I know what those are. Just put the bag down, and let's get to the park. SADY What? My art project? It won't take long, I promise. I'll be there. I've just got to- (MIKE pretends to let her pass so he can grab the bag. SADY pulls it away from him. MIKE manages not to let her pass) Get the gently caress out of my way. MIKE Can't. Not until you put down that bag. SADY I told you, it's an art project. MIKE Since when is mass murder for political purposes an acceptable mode of personal expression? And did you seriously think you could build a bomb in my apartment without me noticing? SADY I'm targeting a building in the financial district, extremely late at night. Security personnel won't be near the explosion, and should be able to escape with minimal effort. No one will be there. The only thing you're protecting is the assets of a financial firm. So, good job, dude. MIKE If you go through with this, they'll do everything they can to kill you. They will break the law if they have to. Then they'll change the law so they can do it again, to everybody, all the time. SADY Please. They've never needed reasons to break the law or take our rights away. Our government isn't accountable to us, and we need to change that. MIKE Those problems will be made so much worse if you fly your toy plane full of explosives at a financial building. SADY Then what will solve those problems? We shout and shout all we want, and if we ever get loud enough for the people in power to hear us, they send in the cops. If the cops kettle us, beat us senseless, and arrest us, we'll pay fines and medical bills and generally have our lives ruined, and the people who did it will get two weeks paid vacation. And the people in power will still do nothing. MIKE And a terrorist attack and a toy airplane solve that how? SADY What has protesting done? This toy airplane is a UAV. It can hit a target while I'm at a march. It costs the US military $10,000 to buy one, and they're so dangerous that it's highly illegal to export them. This one cost me $500. With the right target, I can do hundreds of millions of dollars of damage, crippling a government or financial system. I can make another one tomorrow. It takes one half of a McDonald's paycheck to cause that kind of damage to the people who are trying to enslave us. How many fewer politicians could they afford to bribe once they've lost $100 million dollars? MIKE The government would help pay for the repairs, and it's not going to stop them from lobbying, anyway. SADY They couldn't afford to do it forever. MIKE Who says they'd have to? They'd find you before you could do it twice. Sady, New York cops may not be great at dealing with protesters, but they are probably a lot better at stopping bombings and catching terrorists. SADY Who says I'd be alone? MIKE You're not the only one with a toy airplane? SADY I won't be. Did I tell you how loving cheap this is? Did you notice how our friends are hospitalized and locked up right now for even voicing their dissent with the government? Of all the people we're going to see at that march against police violence, how many of them know someone like Jenny or Jacob? How many of them are like Jenny and Jacob? When Occupy is over, how do you think they're going to feel, having had the poo poo kicked out of them, having to pay for getting the poo poo kicked out of them for the rest of their lives, waiting in vain for justice to come to those that hurt them, waiting in vain for their struggle to make their democracy act like a loving democracy again to mean something? MIKE What makes you think it's in vain? People are listening to us. Even if there are no changes in the government after Occupy is over, we've still raised people's political awareness. That means more people to donate to causes, more people who will write or call congress, more pressure on politicians to support their constituents. Reform will come. SADY Yeah, all the politicians who have reaped the benefits of corporate servitude for so long are just going to stop taking corporate money because we tell them to. MIKE They won't get corporate money if the people won't elect them. Politically aware people won't vote for scumbags who throw them under the bus for corporate money. SADY Then the politicians are screwed either way! Either they vote in the public interest and lose a bunch of money, or they vote against our interests, get a bunch of money, then leave office. Even if your utopia was possible, do you think those people in power that you intend to disadvantage would allow it to happen? Outside, they're beating people for even talking about an end to corruption. They'd murder us if it seemed like we might actually change something. Anyway, money's always been more useful for winning elections than common sense. MIKE That can change if we raise awareness, keep people educated. SADY Education's dying, in case you didn't notice. (pause) MIKE Something terrible has happened inside you. You can't even dredge up an ounce of hope for anything? SADY Hoping that you can make the people with power over us act against their own best interest just by shouting at them enough isn't hope, it's bullshit. I've come to my senses. I've looked up and seen the faces of our oppressors. I have accepted what they are. I have hope. It's tempered by reality. It's right here. (SADY holds up the plane. MIKE grabs for it, but SADY pulls it away. MIKE and SADY struggle over the plane. This devolves into a brawl. SADY get the advantage) MIKE I'll call the police if you leave! You know I will! Are you going to kill me, too! SADY No! (SADY hits MIKE in the face repeatedly, until he stops moving) I'M NOT loving KILLING ANYBODY! I'M NOT TARGETING PEOPLE! YOU loving rear end in a top hat! (SADY grabs the plane and her bag, then walks to the door. SADY looks at MIKE, then reaches into her pocket for her cellphone. MIKE groans and starts moving. Pause.) The fuckers with sticks beating our friends, and their bosses and their bosses bosses, are all products of us. If we want them to change, we have to change ourselves. We have to change everybody. We have to fight for the country we want. MIKE You're right. (MIKE gets up on all fours) But it takes time. Generations, maybe... If we fight for it, it'll happen. But you need to give it time. And we can't win with violence. SADY What is your hope based on? For years now, the only fights we've ever won with protest were to stop things from getting massively, obviously worse. And we don't even always win those. That's not progress. (SADY leaves. MIKE grabs his cellphone and starts dialing)
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Dec 24, 2014 07:36
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 13:44 |
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is it supposed to be terrible
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Dec 25, 2014 16:31
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*grabs his cellphone and starts dialing* mods??????????????????
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Dec 25, 2014 17:28
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Stubear St. Pierre posted:is it supposed to be terrible It is not, no.
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Dec 26, 2014 03:08
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The issue is that the entire play is just two people speaking freshman gov. exposition past each other with all the subtlety of a John Galt monologue. It's like that one weird friend that everyone barely tolerates while he sits outside a Starbucks ranting about anarchism. Two people argue, neither one changes their mind or develops in any way, then one walks off. The end. Also, my memory of the OWS movement is a little patchy, and it's coming purely from the perspective of an observer, but uh, I'm pretty sure "make illegal drone bombs and start a domestic terror campaign" wasn't part of that narrative. So not only is the script just really heavy-handed, it also basically has nothing whatsoever to do with OWS besides "we have to, like, stick it to the man, man!" Whether intentionally or not, this kind of frames the movement as (at least partially) a call to violence, which seems pretty...questionable. What exactly are you intending to communicate with this?
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Dec 26, 2014 03:47
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Putting the writing and characters aside, your premise is, simply put, retarded. Do you even realize how big an RC plane would have to be lift an explosive payload? Do you realize how heavy an effective homemade bomb would be, and that to penetrate a concrete building at altitude you'd most likely have to use a shaped charge? Check this paper out. It's a "heavy lift" RC plane designed by engineers. From your story it seems our heroin is designing a plane small enough to be tucked under her arm. A "heavy" payload for a plane that size is a 2"x2"x5" block of wood. Assuming she could get plastic explosives (which she couldn't) you're looking at a cube of black powder hardly more powerful than a firecracker. Even with military grade explosive, there would be hardly any damage to a building with this setup. You could plausibly tape ball bearings around the explosives and maybe maim some people like those Boston dudes did, but even then they were using multiple pounds of powder and pressure cookers to boot. The plane wouldn't have a chance of penetrating the building. Any building. There was a kid that stole a whole loving Cessna and crashed it into a bank and hardly did any damage. Model planes are made of balsa, styrofoam and plastic. They're too light to get up to any kind of speed and even if you designed a pulse jet (which would be incredibly loud and hard to control) you still wouldn't have enough mass to penetrate the building. Assuming you'd want like, 10-50lbs of explosives, you'd probably need a drone like this:  Your characters would be much better off building a trebuchet of reasonable size and hurling a brewing carboy full of gasoline at the building. autism ZX spectrum fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 04:30
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Nubile Hillock posted:Your characters would be much better off building a trebuchet of reasonable size and hurling a brewing carboy full of gasoline at the building. original idea do not steal
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Dec 26, 2014 09:50
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At a OWS rally two men stand on soapboxes in separate ends of the stage. Both of them are trying to get the crowds attention. Most people don't notice them but a few stop and listen. The man on the far-right is dressed in a black shirt and jackboots, his head is shaved. The man on the left is dressed in a ill fitting suit, he is pudgy and his beard is unkempt and seems to mostly exist to create the illusion of a chin. He is carrying a large sign about the Ron Paul revolution. Both of them begin to address the crowd. NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) Wall Street is not a real free market. It is run by a cabal of international bankers ! They both pause and look at each other shocked. NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) Rothchilds! They pause again and look at each other. NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) Stop copying me! They become obviously more agitated. Hesitantly they raise their megaphones again. Both of them take deep breaths and start making the same random nonesense noises still in perfect unison. A drum circle begins to form at the center of the stage. The dreadlocked drummers beat their drums with increased intensity as a HIPPY CHICK with no shoes on dances in the middle and the Neckbeard and the Skinheads gibberish becomes louder and more rapid. THE SPECTRE OF ANDREW BREITBART enters the stage. Bloated, rotten and wearing a torn suit he swings chains around himself. BREITBART (at the top of his lungs) STOP RAPING PEOPLE! NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) blah blah blah blah blah blah JEWS! blah blah blah blah! BREITBART (at the top of his lungs) STOP RAPING PEOPLE! NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) Yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda OBAMANATION! BREITBART (at the top of his lungs) STOP RAPING PEOPLE! A THIRD WORLD MAOIST, A TROTSKYITE and a HOXAHAIST run into the stage. They prance about and throw badly xeroxed flyers about communism at the audiance. BREITBART (at the top of his lungs) STOP RAPING PEOPLE! NECKBEARD and SKINHEAD (in perfect unison) *blowing raspberries* The THIRD WORLD MAOIST, the TROTSKYITE and the HOXAHAIST stop for a moment and look at each other. They charge into the drum ring at the center of the stage knocking the HIPPY CHICK aside. TROTSKYITE Bureaucrats! THIRD WORLD MAOIST Decadent western imperialist scum! HOXHAIST Revionists! They begin to fight each other. The drummers continue to drum as if nothing is going on. The skinhead and neckbeard continue to spout gibbereish. Breitbart roams the stage swinging his chains screaming about rape. A DUMPY MIDDLE AGED MAN wearing a plaid shirt and a trucker hat enters the stage. He walks to the very front and strikes a heroic pose. DUMPY MIDDLE AGED MAN These people are protesting capitalism but the food they eat and clothes they wear are made by capitalist companies! Everyone stops what they are doing and looks at the Dumpy Middle Aged Man. Everyone mutters something about him being right and then leaves in embarrassment. Except for Breitbart who still roams the stage wailing. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 19:51
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 13:44 |
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This play was a lot better than yours, op.
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Dec 26, 2014 20:46
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