Workshopping Arthur M. Jolly's script, "That Girl In Our Freshman Year," was a raucous session of reading, suggestion, bus rides and analysis of voice-gender.
Jolly introduced his script as an infant script, just out of the writing phase, and asked for a rousing workshop session to help him mature the script. How wonderful it is when an author is aware of the value of having a script read by folks who didn't write it, hearing the character voices, and being eager for ideas and responses to the piece.
Cate Vincent and Jeff Mandel were the workshop participants and read the script and then offered solid advice about getting the theme to be heard even more clearly.
One of the points of discussion was around the gender of the character voices. Two girls are the cast of characters, and we talked about how girls and boys use language differently, and which gender the dialogue sounded like. Take a listen to the audio recording of the session and hear it for yourself.
Afterward, I was talking with a colleague about leading these sessions and remarked that one of the powerful things I am learning is that workshopping has a language all its own. Much like offering critique on a bottle of fine wine, workshopping scripts has a language that is unique. I think this may have to be a section in the paper I write at the end of this project: the language of workshopping.
My thanks to Arthur, Jeff and Cate for a great session. You can listen to the audio recording of the session.