If you haven’t met the people you are sending your play to, your script is their first impression of you. “You should think of your script as what represents you. But what happens when there’s a script that looks discombobulated? The one with wildly unclear formatting that doesn’t serve the play and only adds hardship to the reader/evaluator’s job? Hmmmm…. Outright conscious weeding is conducted on scripts which prima facie violate submission protocol (exceeds restrictions, off-topic, inappropriate content, etc.). So I do what I think other volunteer evaluators do but are afraid to admit.
A big, heavy folder so immense that 1) the Postal Service is legally required to assign a zip code and 2) I take out worker’s comp before even lifting the thing.
Obviously, it’s not one single person reading all those scripts. You know, the committee that has to read somewhere between three or four thousand script submissions for the upcoming 10-minute festival, new American play competition, or annual workshop event? Yeah, that committee. I’m also that guy on the play selection committee. But this blog entry is a service to playwrights. Except this story is likely to get me skewered by the community. Now I’m going to share another playwriting story. My name is Sam Graber and I’m a Submitting Playwright. The Submitting Playwright is someone who visits the various websites showcasing upcoming script submission opportunities and refreshes their browser somewhere between three or four thousand times a minute just to make sure they haven’t missed a posting. The Submitting Playwright is someone from the general field of writers whose primary conduit to production is sending scripts to open opportunities and having that script selected from the field.
The Submitting Playwright is not a company member nor resident writer for a particular theater. The Submitting Playwright isn’t fellowed and is without financial sponsorship. The Submitting Playwright is someone who hasn’t been commissioned by a theater company to write a new play. It matters because if you’re reading this then there’s a good chance you belong to a group of people whom I call the Submitting Playwright. You’ve got brilliant characters, intense theme and biting dialogue! Why does ‘look’ matter? Point being–why should it matter if your championship script is delivered to a producer on handwritten roadside puree? Your work is the writing. There was a young Miller frantically scampering around the dusty highway trying to claw all the original script pieces back into his hands. It resulted in yellow line-ruled paper scattered all over the road. As he was driving in an open-roofed car along Texas roadway the yellow line-ruled paper was gripped by wind and flown from the car. Miller was handwriting the play on yellow line-ruled paper. That Championship Season, recipient of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was written by Jason Miller while he was working summer theater in Texas. I started the seminar by telling one of my favorite playwright stories. Nobody is wondering whether the playwright first etched the script into rotting wood bark, right? People are watching a performance on stage. Why should script formatting even matter? It’s not like an audience is seeing the playwright’s method of text entry. And the more of these standards you use and the more of these standards you adhere to the more acceptance you garner as a Submitting Playwright. So again, the rejoinder, before you delve through my missive, is that there is no single, go-to standard script format standard.
The seminar teaser:įor everyone that’s wanted to learn best practices for preparing your script in theatrical format, this is the seminar for you! Sam Graber will show you how to create styles and templates so that your script has that look. Fun and laughs included. During November 2014 I first shared my assembled answer to what standard script format is supposed to look like at the Playwrights’ Center, as part of their ongoing seminar series. I would like to try and assemble those standards pieces for you here.
So here comes the chief culprit of theatrical mischief (me) to assail your cold-shocked minds with some warming news, which is that while there isn’t a universal, inviolable pronouncement of proper script format governing theater, there are various format standardswhich have become generally accepted. Now that the Minneapolis weather has turned from a scorching positive fifteen to a balmy ten below in the shade, it’s time to huddle together and posit the great question no doubt rattling the mind of all grant-seeking playwrights…the ever-present question being…Ĭan someone please tell me what standard script format is supposed to look like?!?!?! This basic template created in Microsoft Word can be used as a starting point for your next script.