George Smart's play, "The Meditator," is a classic example of differentiated character voice. Two characters verbally spar throughout the play, all shrouded in the guise of meditation practice. Funny and true-to-life, this play was a hoot to read and workshop!
The workshop focused on the context of the script and the characters, and worked through what George had commented on during his introduction when he said, "Something not quite right about it, but I'm not sure what." (OK, that was a paraphrase, his exact words are in the audio recording.)
The characters were established, the dialogue poignant, but the context of the character relationships was not quite believable. After several minutes of workshopping, and talking through how to make the context more believable, Barbara hit upon a new idea that we all got excited about.
This workshop is a good example of not re-writing the story line but rather talking through the context in which the story is presented.
My thanks to George for his script, and to Barbara, Cate and Christian for workshopping it with me.