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Below are a series of activities you can use to spark inspiration or develop your work further. Click on each box to get detailed instructions, worksheets, and more! Plus, read plays from our winning Student Playwrights. |
New Content 6.4.20
Session 3 of our new online class , 3 Scenes in 5 Sessions, has been added! This class will guide students through the process of writing a 3-scene play from beginning to end. If you’ve never written a play before, don’t worry! Our Director of Education Mindy Early (she/her) will walk you through the process step by step.
Check out our brand new, step-by-step monologue writing workshop!
Featuring Videos, Worksheets, Samples, Tips, and Support : all from PYP's Resident Teaching Artist Steve Gravelle
Featuring Videos, Worksheets, Samples, Tips, and Support : all from PYP's Resident Teaching Artist Steve Gravelle
Ready to be a costume designer? Use this activity along with a play (below) to give your characters life!
A list of playwriting terms and definitions.
If you've already written a monologue, and are interested in developing a play, this is the exercise for you! These steps will help you identify essential information about the story you've created in your monologue and will ask you questions to begin to turn your monologue into a scene!
Are you interested in creating plays from the world around you? Is there an issue in the world you're moved to speak out about? This exercise will help you delve into creating a story around a real-world conflict by exploring the many voices involved in a current events issue. It will also direct you to examples of published plays dealing with current events topics.
Having trouble beginning your play? Do you have too many ideas? Not enough ideas? Here's a simple way to ease into writing a scene without too much pre-planning.
If you are having trouble beginning and want to do some brainstorming to find your characters and the basic outline of your play, here's a great place to start! This is also a useful activity if you find that music helps your thoughts flow.
Winning Plays
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Ye Olde Tail of Hairbrushes and Perils
By 6th Graders Luc Bastien, Ray Eggerts, Owen Erdman, Tomas Felleti-Moore, and Jia-ming Gong |
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When the Queen commands Nortman, Easton, Weston, and Theobold the Bald to retrieve the hairbrush of eternal youth, they each comb the realm on a quest to become the kingdom’s most favored hero. Willst they succeed, or willst they fall into peril?
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6 Minutes And 28 Seconds
by 6th Graders Alice Stricker, Lucia Mecchi, and Anna O'Neill-Dietel |
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It’s Pi-Day, and Jimmy Vincent O’Cranium has just teleported to a parallel universe. It wasn’t on purpose! But it will reveal some surprising secrets, and maybe even change Jimmy’s home universe — if he can get back there, of course!
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Strangers
by 7th Grader Shannon Cavanagh |
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Ever since Lily’s father died, her mother has been ‘gone’. Whenever Lily speaks, her words rebound off her mother as if they’re strangers. Unwilling to give up, Lily keeps searching for the right words to bring her mother back.
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Love is a Cliché- In a Café
by 8th Grader Claire Sun Appropriate for ages 13+ |
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In this collection of interwoven vignettes, love is found, lost, and sometimes even fabricated. Against the backdrop of a bustling outdoor café, humor and drama collide as countless pairings unknowingly demonstrate the many tropes about love.
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Acceptance
by 8th Grader Lucy Palandro Appropriate for ages 13+ |
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Aurelia comes from a loving, traditional Catholic family and she cares deeply about them and what they think of her and her choices. So when her interests in Mae, a girl in her neighborhood, run deeper than just wanting to be friends, Aurelia’s internal tug of war between herself and her family manifests in the real world with Mae caught in the middle.
