Greek Playwriting Project
What is a Greek Tragedy?
A Greek Tragedy is a play which includes a tragedy and teaches a message to the audience.
For this project each group of two people had to create an idea for a Greek tragedy. Each group brainstormed ideas and then presented them to the class. Next we had to create a trifold board and put a storyboard of our plays on it. We also had to include a brief summary of a play and what the backdrop for the play would be if we won the competition to produce and present our play.
Summary of my play:
Our play takes place in 2010, in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area during the time of war. The two main characters are Jonathan, a 19-year-old college freshman, who is curious about the war and cares about the safety of his friends and his dad, who is President of the United States. The President is wondering what he should do about the war and seems to make mistakes about many things, mostly out of pride and stubbornness, and acting before thinking. In the story, the President wants to build a nuclear bomb to end the war quickly and decisively, but his advisors and the public think it’s a bad idea. The President disregards their wishes and orders one built anyway. When the bomb is under construction, something goes wrong and it starts to leak radiation. The President sends in a specially trained Army unit to contain the leak and prevent it from detonating. Jonathon’s best friend is in that Army unit and he is afraid his friend might die while he fixes the bomb, so he sneaks along with him. Jonathan is a lot like his father because he acts before thinking about the consequences. This ends horribly for both father and son because Jonathan and his friend both die as a result of radiation poisoning and burning. Others in the unit die, too. The story’s main message is that when people are too stubborn, proud of themselves and act before thinking they can make bad decisions with horrible consequences. This applies to everyone, from regular citizens to world leaders. We should consider all the facts, the opinions of our advisors, and think things through in order to make good decisions.
The role I took on for this project was the Writer. I think I did a good job on this and took my time to make our play sound professional. I am proud of the final product we created and how we came up with a good idea and made it sound authentic when we had the President speak. One thing I would change is I would have tried to make it more relaxed and not so serious.
Here is a link to my script that you can download and read:
broken_promises_play.doc | |
File Size: | 49 kb |
File Type: | doc |