Captain Conway's Mission!

We begin with a short involving why the dinosaurs became extinct, and their futile efforts to preserve their history:

DINOSAURS

In present day our hero is briefing his crew on their mission and why it is important for earth that they succeed he explains that it is imperative that the human race become more aware of its surroundings following a certain debacle that he recounts to them:

ALIENS

Suddenly, mid-story an impact rocks the ship while they're en route to an unexplored planet. His ship is disabled and lost. When the crew grumbles about distracting them with history lessons, a visitor arrives in the airlock:

THE VISITOR

Now free of distractions, the captain and his crew land at their destination, but something is wrong with this planet:

PUPPETS

The final scene ends with the captain's crewmate finding a certain familiar statue of a dinosaur...The captain turns to face the audience and the truth dawns on him...His earth, his reality, is doomed to be repeated. Over and over for the amusement of the audience.

The various settings (prehistory, presidential speech, spaceship, and planet of puppets) really lends itself to our strength of special effects. There is even the possibility of a trippy dream-sequence for the aliens story if we could manage it. The visitor story could take place within the ship with a working airlock and special effect laser guns. The puppets story has the greatest potential in my opinion, we could have all the props and the stage look like cardboard cut outs with the actors looking like hand puppets.

Possible Genres

Science Fiction

Pros:

Interesting locations

Translates well to SL

Doesn’t rely on actor strength

Panders to the audience

Cons:

Stuff is a bitch to make

Super prims

Can’t take itself seriously

Romance

No just no

Comedy

Pros:

People will react better

Idea translates better

In-Jokes

Con:

Does rely on actor strength

Drama

Pros:

Story driven

Can pull in audience

Translates well into the medium

Cons:

Actor driven

Script driven

High difficulty to pull off

Can’t take itself too seriously

Action

Pro:

Are not script driven

More set driven

Doesn’t rely on actor strength

Cons:

Hard to find action plays

Doesn’t translate into play format well

Horror

Cons:

Doesn’t translate well at all into a virtual environment

Mystery

Pro:

Draws in audience

Cons:

Needs a good script

Musical

Pro:

Can fit to any style

Con:

Needs singing

Western

Pros/Cons:

See drama/action

Con:

Narrow audience

Adventure

Pros:

Makes full use of SL spawning

Translates well

Con:

Tends on the longer side

Story driven

Lots of set building

A few more short skits

This site has a number of short science fiction related skits. They dont require a large number of actors and some of them might allow us to have some really cool scenery/effects.

Sci-Fi plays

More images:

Site for Scripts

This site has a nice collection of scripts, though from the few I read through most were either too short or too long, but I haven't checked them all. Many seem to be Greek in origin, so I believe they are in the public domain by now (most having been written in the B.C.E.). I didn't see any that jumped out at me really, but if pressed I liked Lincoln and Macbeth.

Riddle plays and fairtales

I found a site with many scripts based on lore and fairy tales. One of the plays is a set of three known as riddle plays where there is a play and at the end there is a dilemma or a riddle that the audience can solve before solving the end of the play. It was just a thought
Link to the riddle plays: http://www.whootieowl.com/reading/RID/RID-open.html
Link to the site with many plays about lore and fairytales: http://www.storiestogrowby.com/script.html

Twelve Angry Men

This is a teleplay from the 1950's about twelve jurors gone to decide the verdict of a young boy sentenced to death for a murder. All but one of the jurors are convinced he's guilty, but the last one denies the unanimous vote in favor of looking over the facts because he feels that because this is going to decide the boy's fate, it should be discussed throughly.

I remember watching the film adaptation of this several years ago and considered it as a script. I fear it might be a little too dialog-driven, but we can use the Second Life engine to re-enact the hypotheticals and re-enactments of the jurors as they discuss them.

http://www.filmsite.org/twelve.html

"Revenge" script

A short, ten- to fifteen-minute play about a lawyer with a jealous wife, a wife with a husband who thinks she is cheating on him, and their awkward, blundering and inane discussion about revenge on those who accuse them of things they haven't done.

http://www.rajeun.net/revenge.html

Permission would have to be acquired from the translator, Ellis Toussier (and oddly, not the original author) before a performance would be possible, but should not be too difficult.

Three more SLURL's

Edgar Allan Poe Scripts

I suggested using short stories of Edgar Allan Poe for our performance because we can really use the SL engine to immerse the audience. For example in "The Cask of Amontillado" the story ends with the protagonist taking his revenge on his rival by sealing him in a room in the catacombs by erecting a wall, as the author describes it: tier by tier. At this moment in the performance an enormous claustrophobic enclosure could appear around the actor and the audience to give the scene more immersion.

Found at http://www.poestories.com/

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Script

This site has a full copy of the script.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

If you want a little background on the play try this page.
Lecture on Stoppard

First Script and Screen Shots

Here is a link to the site with the short stories:
http://www.frogstar.com/skitscripts

And here are the screenshots I have found so far:
The SLURLs for the images are: [Stage Island 145,98,34] and [Nari 148,43,155]

Initial Setup

This Blog is for an MQP/IQP group whose goal is to perform a live performance in second life and then create a machinima from the live performance.

This blog is meant to communicate the steps and information for this project.