"How To" Tuesday: "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" From the Story to Play Script.

Todays post  it is slightly different from what I write here, but still I decided to make it, as my class will be participating in theatrical contest this month. My 4th graders need to participate in short play of their choice, based on a book of an English writer.
By short voting process "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" was chosen, an amazing book and an immortal story of childhood power, boyish freedom, opposites and friendship. But now I need to create a play script, that fits my kids.
Don't get me wrong, the amount of "Tom Sawyer" play scripts allows you to go above and beyond without ceating the new one for that paper pile, but the specific way of the contest (we have allows us to have no more than 20 minutes of stage time, and no more than 15 kids involved) puts me in a certain box. And, to be really honest, I haven't seen some decent tutorials for teachers how to write a play script, so here I am, figuring out on my own. I'll do a small tutorial on how I do this and also I'm sharing my contest script I've created along with writing this post. ;)

Here is what you need to consider before even taking the book to your hands:

• how many kids you consider for participation
• how long the play must be
• what amount of technical support you posses
• what decorations do you need and have opportunary to make

Well, the hard work stars when you pick up the book and you start to look for those exact scenes to incorporate into your play. It's not that easy to pick, especially if you have a really dinamic story and not that much time given, or younger kids.
My intention was to take the most iconic scene from the book, so I took the second chapter,(and the begginning of third one) which was about the fence painting.

Here, pretty much, you need just to make a rough sketch for your future play. It will change a hundred and fourty times, so don`t be very stressed about it! Plan this:

• will it be a word-by-word repetition of a writer`s text
• will it be a remake or remastering of some sort
• how many acts and scenes you want to make

In my personal opinion, there should not be more than 2 acts for older kids, and not more than 1 (or couple of short ones) for younger learners. But really it all depends on what level of English your kids posses and how ready they are for the stage. 

Now that is a time for cleanning up the mess around the edges. At this step I also start taking parts from the text and sorting it what belongs where, what quotes and lines will your kids learn and what they wil not even spell. I try at least set for myself these facts:

• timing (what is going to be where)
• what amount of original text will appear in final script
• what decorations are in tottal need, and what you can easely throw away (it happened with at least 50% of decorations in my case)
• style of speech should be even 
• what actions should characters do? Sketch out them

Keep in mind, that you write for kids. Sometimes we tend to owerpower our little heroes. Just keep calm and make it happen.

It is about having fun, after all! Have nice time with your kids and (shhhh! That`s a secret! ;) ) do not stress that much. If kids are interested enough in a play you`ll have great outcome already. 

Yes, there will be great amount of "idon`twannadothat" and "noIwantedtobedifferentcharacter". 

Yes, there will be costumes flying and temper tantrums kicking.

But you`ll be fine.

Trust me. ;)

Here you can download my own script I did. Use it wisely!))