Twitter Improv Game: #WilliesWorld

About

 

University of the Pacific's Department of Theatre Arts will be producing three Tennessee Williams one acts this Fall: This Property is Condemned, Talk to me like the Rain and Let Me Listen, and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.  Performances will take place in The Long Theater October 17-19 and 23-25. In addition, the Playwriting class will be writing 5-minute screenplays as prequels and/or sequels to the one-acts. The Acting for the Camera class will learn acting and filming techniques. In Spring 2015, Theater Arts will produce the student screenplays and remount the live stage plays and films in late Spring, creating a longer interdisciplinary narrative, inspired by the Tennessee Williams stories.

 

We would like to add a third component using "new media."

 

All three plays feature a girl or woman being neglected and/or abused by the people who should be protecting her: parents, boyfriend, husband, a prominent business owner. My hope is that students will volunteer to engage in the project below in order to deepen our understanding of the world of an abandoned child in 1942, in the rural American South. The resulting work can be displayed or shared with the public alongside the films and theater pieces in Fall, Spring or both. Participants can earn a free ticket to the show.

 

 

How To Play

1. Read the one act play THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED. Theatre Arts can provide PDFs of the script.

2. Think about the characters, plot and themes and social mores of the early 1940’s in America. A little Internet research may help.

3. Look over the list of possible characters provided, though you may come up with your own.

4. Choose a character to play.  You may choose someone of a different age and gender than yourself!

5. Engage in an improvisational conversation with other citizens of “Willie’s world.”  The goal is to create a plausible world for the characters of the play, revealing the prevailing biases and social expectations that people in that time and place would have experienced.

6. Tweet “in character”, provoking discussion among the “citizens” of Willie’s world. Use hash-tag #WilliesWorld to keep the improvised discussions linked together in Twitter. These conversations might be live-streamed on a screen between the live presentations of the one-act plays in The Long Theater, or posted or looped on screens in the lobby. Audience members might be invited to role-play.

7. Sign the waiver allowing Theatre Arts to include your tweets in the final production.

8. Guide and engage outside visitors to Willie’s World, bringing them into the role-play without “breaking character.”

9. If someone tweets and is clearly confused that this is an improv, your character could say something like “What do you expect? It’s 1942, rural Mississippi!” to help clue them into the fact that they just entered an improv game.

 

 

Earn A Complimentary Ticket

• Credit is given for number of tweets – at least 15 tweets needed to qualify for complimentary ticket

• Credit given for depth of the conversation

• e.g. the tweet “I bought oranges at the market today.” Gets 1 point, but the tweet “If the 14 year-old wanted to have sex with me and her parents knew, it’s OK!” gets 5 points because it is what we call “an offer” in improvisation. It provides a jumping off point for the next actor. For example, the actor playing a teacher or neighbor might respond with “I don’t think any young girl can make a decision like that! You’re a disgrace to this community and deluded to think that girl wanted to be with you!” 

• Credit given for creativity, reference to historically accurate data, ability to engage other members of the role-play, and creating a unique “voice” through word choice, phrasing, accent utilized in the dialogue.

• 40 points total required for complimentary ticket: at least 5, 5-point tweets needed to qualify and a least 15 tweets in total, but you can play for as long or short a period as you like.

 

 

The resultant project is what is called Transmedia Storytelling because the story is being related to the audience across multiple media: live theater performance, mediated (film) performance and social media.