my virgin attempt at playwright and other juicy stuff

Joined SMU's 24 hour playwright competition. From yesterday night 8pm I had been struggling with 3 2 other teammates to write the play. It's a some experience, by that, it doesn't neccessarily have to be a good thing, experience not = good everytime. :D

Anyway, it's pretty fun, from brainstorming to writing down, to reading it out, like me and a partner to see the flow, to relate our story to as many plot as possible.

So far, we linked it to

A Beautiful Mind
Prince of Egypt
A.I.
King Lear ala all Shakespearian tradegies
Pride and Prejudice
Hedda Gabler
My T.W.C project

Funny thing is the 4th groupmate, who was kinda sacked in the end, walked in 2 hours late, and criticised our plot to no end. And I bet either Mummy or some other smartass would have taught you that whenever you have something you don't see eye to eye with, at least reason out why, and offer an alternative.

First he said our plot is "so copied". he said why do you need to copy from the movies? Come up with something original!

I agree. However, I have to put across the fact that movies themselves while successful are most of the time not original too.

Titanic took a history and twisted it. 10 things I hate about you took Shakey's Taming of the Shrew, The John Harnett (awww) and Julia Stiles show "O" was taken from Shakey's Othello. Even our latest movie League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen was taken from a Comic, WHO in turn took the characters from various lit books, as I have once rave abit on.

And so I said my point. A good playwright is not about how original the idea is. Sure it may help, but if you don't have an idea, it's okay to gather pointers from other sources and write one with a good and hard impact.

Apparently not having heard my point at all, he went on to ask a very irrelevant question

"So Hui Hui, if there is something intangible about SMU that you can change, what would it be?"

I mean WTF? Then he talked about how a good original idea will be a distinction, while a copied play is a A+ tops.

So Mr another groupmate asked Mr Smarty so you've got any good plots?

Mr S says: XXX... I am not here to lead, I am here to brainstorm with all of you... Wake up your idea, not in army liao.

3 of us: ?????????????? again

Anyhow, we went on with the skeleton we painstakingly planned for 2 hours without him. And throughout the 24 hours, if I may even think he was here for 5, he went out to sleep, to study, went home without a word, and did as much work as changing some grammatical error and nodding of head in agreement.

And with that I present my case on him. Any further elaborations will be a waste of my time.

Other than that, I am extremely satisfied with the play, however unpro or awful critics feel. Afterall, it's my baby. And all Mummies thinks their babies are pretty (I think?)