Anthony Pezzula's script, "Pods," was a throw-back to the fifties, a tribute to the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" film. Pezzula came out of the gate with tight, fun dialogue that brought the characters alive and made the script jump to life. If you want a good read of inter-couple relationship traits revealed through dialogue, check out Pezzula's script!
The workshop session focused on the need for more detail from the movie, to allow those audience members who aren't Body Snatchers aficionados to stay with the story and be able to grasp the references and meaning that are littered throughout the dialogue. This is an interesting question of balance: in scripts which reference another work, how much can one rely upon assumed knowledge and how much does a script need to "stand on its own?"
John Byrne (he's becoming a TMPW-regular; see Session 23 for a workshop of his script, "The Temptation of Saint Anthony") put it this way, "If you write for sixth-graders, you'll be just fine."
I need to say that again: "If you write for sixth-graders, you'll be just fine." John, can I steal that for a chapter title in the paper I'm writing at the end of this project?!
Dennis Agle also joined in the session, and we had a strong discussion of how to build the strength of the dialogue into a ten-minute play that resolves the yearnings of the audience by the curtain drop.
My thanks to Anthony for his script and to John and Dennis for the workshopping.
You can listen to the audio recording of the session.