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Fun Writing Challenge!!! Brought to you by a ✨Theatre Kid✨

Now, for clarification, I’ve done this multiple times, but it has been with multiple people and under a time limit, something I’m aware may be stressful or difficult for some people, so adjust as needed.

So I’m currently a part of a theatre troupe and every year we do a couple of cabaret/vaudeville type shows to bring in some extra cash for little cost plus fun for us actors! It’s a mix of songs and skits, the songs are all from musicals but the scenes are written and directed by the actors themselves. It’s fun, we all have a great time, hallelujah. Anyways, our director/supervisor in charge of this event has participated in a few 24-hour playwriting challenges in her time and decided to give us, her wonderful actors, a similar challenge. It goes as follows:

At the beginning of the show as the audience is walking in there are several props and costumes on stage as well as several lists. The audience is informed that they get to vote on a few things. Once the show begins, the votes are tallied up and handed to the writers in the back. Out of the tallies, we are given the top 3 costumes, top 3 props, the top setting, and the top line of dialogue to create a scene with. We are then given approximately an hour (really it’s just however long the show is) to write a scene, cast it, and block it. At the end of the show, we print out the scripts, get into costume, and perform it for the audience. I just did it for the 4th and final time (moving for work) and had a blast!

It took a lot of trial and error to work at some of the kinks in the process. We originally had 3 lines of dialogue that were personally suggested by the audience and pulled out of a hat, but that led to a lot of trolling and directed the outcome of the scenes a little too much for our liking. We also had a much larger writing group the first few times which made the process far more chaotic and distracting than we had time for. However, that’s the fun part: there is no set rules to this challenge, you can manipulate the general premise to fit whatever works best for you and your resources, but it also helps get you out of your head and takes away some of the pressure of making those big decisions or worrying about the smaller details. Have fun with it!!!

I just wanted to share it here because 1. I had fun and I hope others will too and 2. I think Tumblr polls could make this so fun and chaotic for a creator to do with their audience. Enjoy, Tumblrinas, go wild!