I am taking playwriting seminar this semester. For this class I must write a 10-minute one-act, oh what you call it, play.

Tonight was the night to pitch ideas. In a perfect world. I found myself aggravated by continual prolonging of the idea session, of which we were each supposed to pitch 2 ideas tonight. Only half the class ended up pitching 1.

My point? (which is not the annoyance)

I actually very badly wanted to pitch one of my ideas tonight. So much that I was practically falling out of my chair, anticipating my turn to run my thoughts. This is not because I think I have some genius idea, and that it is the best one ever. It's because I have an idea for a play that might be mediocre, but I'm burning to write, and I wanted feedback. I wanted ideas to how this could be staged. And I wanted to know if this could even work.

And I went home with nothing.

And so. If you would be so nice, I will propose my pitch right now to whoever might read this blog. All 3 of you (but that's better than non).

working title- Drink Your Coffee, It’ll all be OK.
This will probably end up being a satire, with some black comedy and some absurdism rooted in it.

Broad Stroke (theme):

Apathy is one of the biggest diseases of this generation. The only way to break out of this apathy and truly live is to die to your old life.


Stasis:

Normal, comfortable college campus, named Freedom University, slightly isolated from everywhere else, in a bubble. Angela is a student there, privileged and wealthy, and deeply in love with her boyfriend, she wants to marry. Her world is in perfect oblivion. Nothing bad can happen.

Intrusion:
Angela starts to notice that people are falling down, dying. And no one is doing anything about it, except when the bodies get removed. Not many around her notices these bodies. And when they do, they just go on with their lives.

Fight: Angela must overcome her fear of people andself-consciousness of her lisp to get people to understand what’s happening and do something about it. Her boyfriend acts as a barrier to this, as he has always served to protect her and give her confidence.

It isn’t until poor students get kicked out of housing that anyone decides to start fighting the administration, who is behind these deaths. Angela tries to figure out what she can actively do, but gets even more confused when her boyfriend starts urging her to marry him. He wants to protect her to get away from the messy life of the now flawed campus, but she wants to stay and help out.

Angela finds out that if she gives away everything she has and gets the other wealthy students to share, they can stop the death and poverty. Even when she reaches this realization, she sees that more than money must be given, and she doesn't know what.

Crisis
She has to decide though to give away everything or to leave and marry her boyfriend, and live a comfortable American dream.

So that's it.
The major issue this play is addressing is the human rights crimes made around the world that we are daily ignorant to in our sheltered culture. The genocide/plague that persists will be made to parallel the events occurring in Sudan. The satire will hopefully encourage people to think about their living situations, how lucky we really are, and think about giving away their hearts, their lives to help people who are suffering and promote a movement against apathy in American youth/young adult culture.

I have a general idea here. And I think this is unique and interesting to see on stage, but I'm not sure how to flesh it out for the stage. So any suggestions would be wonderful.

Thank you.