Young Writers Society

All events in this play are derived from real events which occurred in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo on April 22nd. They were reported by Reuters, which inspired this story. Read the original article here.

Enjoy.

I really liked the play. I love the title!!!!!!!!! When I first saw the title, I was saying to myself, "Yes! Finally a play I want to read." You could have a very great future for writing plays. Kudos to the dramatist! I want to read more please. Good luck.

First of all: The title is really good. Not only because it sounds funny and it's obviously quite... catchy, but because its silly and B-Moviesh, which really isn't the feel your play has at all. You tackle some important issues, man, and sometimes you do it vaguely, and you do it too judgementally, but you do it nonetheless, and that's always good. That your play has some sort of relevance. I would maybe suggest that you change "invasion" to "the attack", because invasion has me thinking about aliens and ETs, and that's not a nice image to have. Aliens stealing penises. Ugh.

Look, this is a good play. It's interesting, and engrossing, and I was never bored while reading it. The subject matter is just too good, and it's structured quite nicely. The radio show as a framing device between scenes was inspired, and it keeps the thing rolling, it never seems to drag, you know? I want to know what happens. It's entretaining. Keep that in mind, alright? Because as far as I'm concerned, you have succeeded in writing a good piece of work. Of course, it has problems. But overall, it's a good play and, most of all, a good idea. The kind of idea I'll probably steal in four years, thinking it's mine.

What?

OK, so let's tackle the main problem: you don't use stuff. That sounds terribly silly, I know, but listen to this, alright? Look, I already told you that the radio thing was a fantastic framing device, but I found the MICROPHONE character wasn't anything... special. You should make him memorable, you should give him funny dialogue, making him be more inflammatory. Have you seen Do The Right Thing? Personally, I think it's not that great of a film, but Samuel L. Jackson's DJ character is fantastic. He doesn't speak much, he just informs the viewer about the hot weather, and the growing tension. But he does it in such a way, that it's fun to listen to him. You remember the character. Your DJ speaks like a telephone operator. Sure, maybe it's the job of the actor to give the character those quirks and tweaks that make him memorable, but you should do it too. More specifically, his opening monologue didn't pull me in. Have him scream the name of the radio station. Give him some tagline to use.

And: lose the Coca Cola ad.

Another problem is the dialogue. It informs us of the situation, but it doesn't sound like real conversation. I mean, that's my dilemma, because you have such a good subject matter, and you use it so well, that I want to listen to them talk, and I want to see them interact, but I'm also aware that you're making some poor decisions concerning words and shit. The first conversation is teh one that works best, but it's still full of bits and pieces that are distracting because they don't sound real.

For example: when Alain brings up the hot day again, and the penis snatching, why does he do it? They were talking about the war and how people seem to be more relaxed around this time, why the sudden change of topic? Conversations are in constant flow, that's true, but topics have to be linked. You should have Alain have a drink, sigh, pause, and then bring it up. Something like that. I know that's not terribly helpful, but you have to say these things out loud, let it flow, don't force yourself to rush the conversation just to get to the thing you want to say quickly.

Make the dialogue more talky. People don't often tangle up words, and use things like: "you know" and "like" and "I mean". Let's take this line:

WENDELL: It doesn’t seem that it will occur that way this time.

That doesn't sound like something someone would actually say. It sounds ugly. You have to make your dialogue sound good, pleasant. That sentence sounds horrible. You're writing dialogue like you're writing stage directions. Make it more talky! See: Any movie by Tarantino, Mean Streets and Who's That Knocking On My Door? by Scorsese, Clerks by Kevin Smith and comicbooks written by Brian Michael Bendis (preferably his early, crime stuff, because he's verging on self-parody at this point).

They don't write meaningful, deep dialogue, because people in real life rarely ever say deep, meaningful things. And if they do, they do it clumsily and awkwardly, with lot's of self-interruptions and "...".

Also: Oleko bothers me. He's actually a very good character, but the way you portray him... he doesn't seem like a real person. He gets angry too fast, he just starts screaming out of the blue, and there's no real escalation of events. It's like, he's talking to Alain or to Wendell, and suddenly he's kicking them out of the room, or pointing guns at them. You should make him more calm, and like... authoritarian. What I mean is that you shouldn't have him screaming all the time. You should make him more menancing, by screaming at people without every loosing his cool, without ever really screaming. The part where Wendell barges inside and Oleko screams is ridiculous. It's a funny scene, but Oleko screaming like that doesn't really... fit. He should chastise him, sure, but he can't go around screaming at people he doesn't know. People in public positions don't do that.

Another thing about using stuff: the scene with the EXPERT should've been hilarious. It wasn't. You should make his anecdotes much more out there. Make him more memorable. Plus: you should really have some sort of escalation of events. Have some scenes with an angry mob, or with some guy being chased in the streets. Maybe have the viewer catch a glimpse of the mob outside the editor's house while Wendell and Alain speak on the phone or whatever. Something like that. Make us feel like everything is going out of control because of the penis snatchers.

Anyways, enough about that stuff, I wanna talk about some of the points you make. I love the fact that Oleko's decisions end up making sense. The reporters had the right to print the story, but it was a stupid thing to do. Olenko didn't have the right to hold them, but it was the smartest thing to do. Nobody got hurt and we end up admiring the guy. Sorcery sounds like a stupid thing, but has there really got to be magic involved for there to be sorcery? Mass histeria and public panic seems like sorcery enough. I also like the fact that Wendell, a foreigner, never really gets to understand the mentality of Oleko. You should lose the health ministers going on the radio, though. It undermines the -whaddayacallit-, the dilemmas and shit.

Seriously, you took a news item, and you used it to make an engrossing story, touching a lot of things like civil liberties, and superstitions, and mass histeria, and even how people far away from wars feel about wars, and you do it in a way that's entretaining. It's not perfect, but it certainly is great.

There were some typos, and I'd love to be the kind of reviewer who does annotations on every thing he finds, but I'm just too lazy. Seriously, though, good stuff. Keep writing, man.

I am so sorry this took so long for me to get to. At least I'm here, right?

I've attached a copy of the story to this post - most of it is text edits and so on. I have a lot of comments though, but I'll just keep them here. Hopefully I want be redundant as to what others have said?

This was cute, and it was funny, but my problem was that it wasn't memorable. A lot of this had to do with the characters, and their voices. None of your characters stood out to me, and it was hard for any of them to stand out because they all sounded exactly the same. No one had a distinct voice, or a distinct way of speaking. And for that matter, they all sounded too grammatically accurate, but then when it came down to it, they were more verbose than accurate, which was frustraiting to read. The lack of contractions made reading strange - why so formal?

Your characters seem distanced from the actual story. You're telling the story through them - which is interesting - and they have a story, but do I care about there story? No, I can't really find a reason to care about your characters. I have nothing invested in them, so when someone pulls a gun out and threatens to shoot, I don't care at all. Your plot may be interesting, but your characters weren't, and even your plot could have had more spice. You were inspired by the news article, which is great, but it had nothing to really stand out to me - it didn't save it and make it memorable.

Your conflict didn't come through too well, I don't know if this was because of the writing or because you expect it to be better on stage, but in any of the arguing scenes, or the confrontational scenes, it seems melodramatic. Again, this could be because I don't care enough about the story or the characters, or because of your diction and syntax, but it's a problem that needs to be fixed. I can't imagine that this would be any more interesting on stage - they would still have strange ways of speaking, and no one would sound unique.

I had a feeling you were trying to make the African characters speak in broken English - or at least make it sound that English wasn't their first language. I couldn't be sure though, because at the same time, your foreign character sounded like that, too. There was no distinctions between any of the characters...

To me, you relied too much on the inspiration from the news article, and the bizarre nature of the plot and back story, and neglected to develop anything else. While it's funny in the beginning, by the end, I don't care. I think you need to pay more attention to the characters, and bring them more to life. Make this story not just about penis snatchers, but about your foreigner, and his struggle to deal with a world that he doesn't understand, and your natives and their struggle to handle old world ideals, and new ones. You don't even have to focus on those, but you need to bring your characters to life. More than anything, you need to make me care about your characters.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me! Again, I'm sorry this took so long.