Uncharted Waters for Emily

Lead Actor has been wanting for some time to workshop Game Night in his acting class. But Game Night is 12 pages and his acting teacher will only allow five minute scenes in the interests of getting the class out before 1 am. So now my mission is to turn a 12-minute short film into a 5-minute play.

But I can't say no to a challenge. A mental challenge, anyway. I'm not really going to take a dare to bungee jump into the LA River or anything.

So I hacked off the first few scenes where our characters play Taboo. It's great character reveal stuff and shows Lead Actor snorting coke, but in order to shave the story down to its bare elements it had to be the first part to go. Lead Actor will just have to sniff a lot and act hyper and hope the audience gets it.

Losing the beginning dropped the script from 12 pages to 9 and I did it in like five minutes. The next 4 pages won't be so easy.

But it makes you wonder just how necessary those extra scenes are. I think the story loses a little without them, but at the same time it might be a good idea to trim them a little since it was so easy to drop them from the script.

I never wrote a play before. Lead Actor wants to produce a play in the fall, but he's not much of a writer so he wondered if I'd be interested in writing something off a pitch that he could star in and produce for the stage. Because I'm not doing enough for his career already.

But I never back away from a challenge and I accept all invitations. Stupid Lead Actor, knowing all my weaknesses.

EDITED TO ADD:

I got it down to 3 1/2 pages in play format. Bare bones, missing some character development but still maintaining the core of the story. In the process I really cleaned up some dialogue. When you have to hack pages at that rate you don't have time for speeches. Some of those changes will stay.