Become a playwright. Finish this script for ‘The Three Little Pigs’

Do any of these lines seem familiar to you?

'I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy and hungry.”

'Feeeeeed me, Seymour!”

'To be or not to be, that is the question.”

If they do, it's likely you've heard them spoken on a stage. Maybe you sang along to the 'Hamilton” musical this summer, saw Shakespeare's 'Hamlet” once in a park or watched the movie version of 'Little Shop of Horrors.”

Most of us only experience theatre as audience members, watching dramatic and funny moments play out in front of us. Actors get to try on other people's personalities to convincingly portray their characters, and costume designers, set designers, orchestra musicians and directors help a play or a musical come to life.

But nearly every great play - and most everything on TV or at the movies - starts out as a script. Some scripts include famous lines, like the three ones above. All scripts, ultimately, are stories that are written by playwrights to be performed.

Do you have a story to tell? Or is there a story you love that you think should be turned into a play? It's probably easier than you think to write your own script - and become a playwright yourself!

We started a script, based on the 'Three Little Pigs” fairy tale, for you to finish. Most scripts have 'stage directions” that explain a scene's setting to the actors - don't read that part aloud. (Sometimes these directions are noted in parentheses during a character's lines, too.)

Finish writing the script we started, or start over and write your own. Once you're finished, become a director and cast your family members in your play. Then it's time to perform. Break a leg!

‘The Three Little Pigs'

Three houses - one made of straw, one made of wood and the other made of bricks - line a neighborhood street. A wolf is walking up to the straw house.

Wolf:

I sure am hungry. (licks his lips and knocks on the door of the straw house) Little pig! Let me in!

Pig #1:

No way, dude. Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!

Wolf:

Fine! Then I'll huff and puff and blow your house down! (blows over the straw house)

(Pig #1 runs away, oinking, and escapes.)

Wolf:

Hmmm. I guess I'll have to find my dinner somewhere else ...

Comments: (319) 398-8330; molly.duffy@thegazette.com