The first TMPW session featured The Wilderness by James McLindon and was a poignant night of reading and workshopping. The script was excellent, the reading spirited, and the workshopping a wonderful first night of lessons.
The Ten Minute Play Workshop project is a study of the art of workshopping and the workshops are a way for me to reflect on the art of leading and participating in workshop sessions.
The first thing I learned was that the participants are as important as the author. This workshop was a strong mix of a very developed script and articulate feedback from the participants.
I armed myself with a list of elements and questions to make sure the critique part of the workshop kept moving. The basic elements I asked the participants to comment on were:
- Initial responses: what did this script do for you?
- Character depth: do we know them as much as you want to? Do you want more character development?
- Story progression: flow? Tempo?
- Title: did it intrigue you? Enough to encapsulate the whole script?
- Production worthy? Production ready?
This outline gave the critique a standard flow, and led us through a ten minute critique session after the script was read. I think the elements were good, but that I need to allow for a deeper reflection time on each one, or find questions that are more open-ended. Lesson learned for next time: develop a richer set of questions to make the critique more verbose.
You can listen to the audio recording of the session to hear how it went. My thanks to James, Charlotte, Cate and Eddie for making this a great first session!
To join in as a workshop participant and be a part of the growing community of ten minute play workshoppers, sign up for an upcoming session - we have a blast!