Section 03 of 14 · From Shakespeare's verse to Singlish
Playwrights
As 2B’s only Playwright, the pressure was on me early on to lay a solid foundation for my class to build upon. From drafting the plot outline while I was overseas in China, to the hour-long calls with Jensen (Director) to create the plot, I believe I have given my best and hopefully done my class proud. The scripting came to a rough start, with comments on the scripts coherence and logic being raised in the first workshop. Jensen and I worked long and hard to improve the plot. I recall staying up past midnight all 5 days of the week at one point. Even after the June holidays, issues on the script’s congruency and quality were constantly raised. It was not easy, to step off my pedestal and not let my pride get the better of me, to consider the countless streams of feedback, making around 10 versions of the script. That, was not the only problem however. Following the model script, our plot was overly long, 5600 words at its highest. With the 15 minute time limit, many of the rehearsals were plagued with frustrations regarding our lengthy play. This problem was discovered as early as the second scriptwriting workshop. In the following months, I relentless cut down on scenes and paraphrased lines to cut the script. With each opportunity comes with the hope of growth. And fortunately, I can proudly say I came out the other side a better version of myself. The cutting process as I mentioned was indubitably challenging. I had to cut out countless scenes I initially deemed “works of art”. I winced as I watched my meticulously crafted scenes deleted. One of the first things I had to cut out was a poem I drafted for the climax! But soon enough, 5000 turned to 4000, 4000 turned to 3000. In the final phases of preparations, I cut out parts of a scene that I’d left untouched the entire period. I did this to ensure the teachers could witness the full extent of the classes hard work. I learnt you should never give up the forest to save the tree. Every success story involves sacrifices, be it “essential” scenes in the play, or cancelling plans to attend rehearsals. Whether or not 2B Drama Challenge is a success, depends on the teachers, but I can definitely choose to impact the project in my own meaningful ways.
Written by Menglong
In this section
2B Drama Challenge Script|Version 1
2B Drama Challenge Script|Version 3
2B Drama Challenge Script|Version 6
The Hardest Scene to Adapt:
Marco's speech in Scene 5. Antony gets a corpse to stand over and a crowd big enough to burn a city. We have fifteen stall owners and a Jalil who is alive, offstage, at a police station. So the forum became a press conference. The mob is six people who are unhappy about their sales figures. The irony gave us more trouble. "Brutus is an honourable man" works because Shakespeare can repeat it seven times until it turns on itself. Try that in a twenty minute school production and people start checking their phones. We used the line twice, changed the second one to "capable", and shifted the weight onto Marco's questions. We also couldn't agree on how much of it Marco means. Antony is in control the whole way through. We let Marco be genuinely angry about Jalil instead, because the fully calculating version made the ending feel cheap and none of us enjoyed watching it. He curses everyone at the end of Scene 4. We left that in because we think he means it. Changes: broke the rule of three, desymmetrised the forum/mob pair, cut "was worse" and "curdle", and replaced the closing one-liner with something that states a decision rather than performing one.
Scene 5
Our Version of the funeral orations, Carefully written by Menglong
2B Drama Challenge Script
Characters Introduction
Menglong's interview
Words from our only playwright