Friday, April 25, 2008

FSW: Silence is Golden Edition

Happy Friday to us, every one!

Here's the news that's fit to print. Richard is dressed as Rachel Ray. Dave is building the casino of his dreams in Vegas. There's no word, yet, from Red.

So I've been trying to work on brevity. My last couple of sketches have felt a little long. I've also been experimenting with using no dialogue in a scene. Trying to get the gist of the scene across with body language. Certainly, a lot of this would depend upon the actors playing these roles, but I think I've got enough descprition here to get the point across. Let me know what you think. Oh, and you'll notice that I've been watching a lot of old Bugs Bunny cartoons on YouTube.


Consent is Silent

A kitchen in a nice apartment. Jack is sitting at the table reading the paper. We hear the slam of a door offstage. Jack doesn’t look up.

Gail storms in and slams down an envelope on the table. She folds her arms, glaring at Jack.

Jack continues to read his newspaper.

Gail begins tapping her foot.

Jack lets a corner of the paper fold down and glances at Gail.

She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head towards the envelope on the table.

Jack straightens up his newspaper and begins reading again.

Gail tears the newspaper out of his hands and grabs his head, pointing it at the piece of paper on the table.

Jack slowly slides it towards him.

Gail gives him a “Well?” look.

Jack shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.

Gail studies him for a moment, then smiles. She straightens out his newspaper and hands it back to him.

Jack smiles up at her.

Gail kisses him on the head and exits.

Jack waits til Gail’s gone then picks up the envelope and smells it. He smiles fondly at it, folds it and begins to slip it into his shirt pocket.

As he does this…

Gail enters with a frying pan and hits Jack in the back of the head with it, knocking him unconscious.

BLACK OUT

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, every time TheWife hits me in the head with a pan it makes my ears ring. Just watching this sketch play out in my head, my ears rang out at the end!

Kudos!

Anonymous said...

Nice work with dialogue-lessness. That would be a great exercise, if we were into assigning ourselves exercises.

Next week: write the sketch entirely with your off-hand!

Anonymous said...

Hmm. Write the sketch with my off-hand. I spend a *lot* of time on the internet surfing with my off-hand, but I've never tried *writing* that way...