Final Project

For this project you and your group are going to create a piece of theatre. You will write it, direct it, act in it, and design it. This is a significant part of your final grade (see your syllabus) so you’ll want to spend several hours creating and rehearsing it. It should be five to seven minutes long.
You will be divided into groups of five. You may decide immediately who will take what position, or you may want to decide that after you begin writing the play and find out who has the most ideas on what area. The positions are not set in stone, but everyone must have an area in which they are the primary person responsible, even though the whole group may contribute to it.
The positions are:
>> playwright (although everyone will come up with basic ideas for the piece, someone should be responsible for writing and refining dialogue, making sure things flow, progress logically, etc.);
>> director
>> scene designer
>> costume designer
>> actors - everyone must be in the piece

Other positions that you may or may not need to distribute as well:
>> sound designer (you are welcome to bring a boom box that plays music or sound effects, but don’t forget that then someone in your group has to run it)
>> stage manager (if the piece is so complex that someone needs to run things during the performance, hopefully not needed)
>> props master (if your set and props are simple, the scene designer would be the person for this, but if it’s real prop heavy, someone else may need to take on the role)
Obviously, we’ll discuss the project at length in class. But you’ll need to come up with a theme and a style first. What type of performance do you want to present? What ideas are you interested in communicating? This is the toughest part. Once you figure this out, the rest will follow. Be thinking about this before you first get together with your group. Have some ideas to throw into the ring. They might not be used, but they may inspire others.

You're going to be using one of the non-texting scenes from Peer Pleasures as your inspiration. You can take one character from the play, turn a scene into a whole play, do an adaptation (that only runs 5-7 minutes), just use a theme from the play, whatever you want. Use the play as a way of commenting on something bigger, or use your play to comment on the original play. As long as you're saying something.

Think of the production you're performing as a workshop, to be done before the major presentation. You're giving the scaled-down version of the piece, but you have to have a concept for a fully-supported piece.

What you must turn in:

• Script - of the entire piece
• process paper - it only needs to be a couple of pages long, but it should discuss how you came up with your ideas, how you divided jobs, what you wanted to focus on thematically and stylistically, and whatever else is important to the group.
• program - should contain some sort of 'director's notes' - what you want your audience to understand about the piece
• set design concept - it doesn't have to be professional, but a description of what you would like to have on stage, perhaps a sketch, if you have a gorup member who's artistically inclined. I want to know you've been thinking about the staging of the piece.
• costume designs for two characters in the play.
• each person in the group must turn in an analysis. A page of what worked and didn't work for you, how the group dynamics worked, anything you want to say about the project.