Writing Charlie Chaplin

Or, how I taught three 12-15 year olds to stop worrying and learn to write plays. Writing a brand new play is difficult enough for adult writers. So, getting three teenagers to collaborate and write one play together is quite a daunting task. Last year, the topic was Mary Shelley, and what emerged was a story about her relationship with Percy Shelley (the good and the bad) entitled Mary Shelley: A Spark of Being. I was incredibly proud of last year's script. This year's topic was Charlie Chaplin. Of course, right after we start researching and writing, I hear about the upcoming Broadway show, Chaplin. Though I doubt our efforts will be affected by a production in New York, it was still mildly disheartening. But, my playwrights soldiered on and continued writing. And now, a brief description of how I have, thus far, led Erin, Matanah, and Zoe to write a one-act play: 1. We began with research. Most kids are only vaguely familiar with Charlie Chaplin. So, I gave them various homework tasks. (a) Research Charlie Chaplin. Give me information about his life. Name 3 people from his life that we may want to be in our play and why. (b) Give me three adjectives that describe each of these people (who they are, etc). (c) Find three big events in Charlie's life that we will most likely want to be in our play and why. 2. After this basic research, we started to decide what our story would be about. I used the following exercises (a) Write a "once upon a time" story about Charlie Chaplin in no more than 5 sentences. It should have a beginning, middle, and end. And, a conflict. (b) I asked them to recall the story of Cinderella. Then, I gave a fake timeline of Cinderella's life that included many more life events after her marriage to the prince. This illustrated how a story based on a person does not have to encompass their entire life; we simply have to find a good "story" to tell about that person. From this, we decided that the story would be a rags to riches tale, depicting Charlie's troubled childhood, rise to stardom, status as the highest paid entertainer in Hollywood, and break from the studios to form his own company. 3. Next, we created an outline, marking out important events in Charlie's life (some that we had previously talked about) that would help us tell the story. In discussing this outline, we hashed out who the most important characters (other than Charlie) would be and how they would fit in to this story. 4. From the outline, I assigned scenes to each playwright. For instance, Matanah wrote scenes 2, 5, 9, and 10. Each playwright feels ownership over a portion of the play. I also discussed how to give good feedback to the other playwrights. For instance, helpful criticism is not just saying "this part is good" or "change this", it's saying things like, "this worked because..." or "this doesn't help tell the story because..." 5. Each week, we met to discuss the scenes that had been written and gave feedback. Deadlines for revisions, feedback, and new scenes were set. The most challenging part of this was that Molly (the education director and assistant director of this project) and I wanted to give more specific feedback than we could cover in the context of the meetings. So, she and I made very specific notes, printed them, and gave them to each playwright. 6. After we had a completed script, I held auditions and cast the show, knowing that many of the characters may change. 7. We are currently rehearsing a staged reading. After this reading, the staff at Wayside Theatre will give feedback to the playwrights. We will then have a meeting to decide which of this feedback we will take and which we won't. Then, the playwrights will have a month to rewrite before we begin our actual rehearsals. We will do most of our scene distribution and feedback through e-mail, in order to ensure the speediest possible rewrites. 8. In October, we will rehearse the play. A playwright will be present at each rehearsal to help us rewrite scenes as needed. And, in November, it will performed! Wow. It occurred to me yesterday how cool it is that these students get all of this training and coaching for free. The theatre does not charge for this program. And, all of the student actors and crew members are volunteers, but get the incredible experience to work on a brand new, world premiere play. As of right now, the script is in decent shape, but still has a ways to go. This staged reading is going to be incredibly helpful. I'm looking forward to more work on this show, and am very proud of the playwrights and my amazing cast of young actors. Look for more updates soon!