Thou shalt not take anothers life.

Okay, this is the first play I've ever written. It was for english class. We were to get into a group of five people and I ended up the writer (and I also played the narrator). I had to put a lot of directions in this, since we were only given, like, three days to write it and then act it out on day four. My english teacher liked it, and I'm quite fond of it as well. Tell me what you think!!!

Scene: Melvin, Robert, and Roy all stand in center stage arguing. The fighting slowly begins to increase as the scene progresses.

Robert: You killed our cats! act wide-eyed and innocent.

Roy: Yeah? I know. Why must you state the obvious? Act very superior when talking.

Robert: You killed our cats!

Melvin: Shut up! He knows that.

Robert: look towards Toy then back at Melvin. While pointing at Roy say. He killed our cats!

Roy: Shut up you inbred hick! I killed your cats!

Robert: but…But…you killed our cats!

Melvin: To Robert say, Shut up! Then turn to Roy and say. Why did you kill our cats?

Robert: Yeah! Why? You killed our cats!

Melvin glares briefly at his younger brother who shuts up and stares at Roy, waiting for an answer.

Roy: Shrug nonchalantly and say, I just felt like it.

Robert: I hate you! You killed our cats!

Robert throws a punch at Roy, but Roy is easily able to dodge this and strikes back, giving Robert a direct blow to the jaw. Roy grips him by the shoulders and pulls him close as if going to threaten him. Melvin, ever the protective brother to Robert, wrenches Roy off his little brother and knees him in the gut.

Roy: You sunuva-

He’s cut off by a blow to the chin. An all out brawl breaking out between the two.

Melvin: I’ll tech you to mess with us.

Robert: and our cats!

Melvin pins Roy to the ground and digs in his pocket. A fork appears in his hand (because you can’t have knives in school) and he stabs him until he stops moving. He stabs him once more to be sure of his death. Roy’s dead.
Robert: take that you…you cat killer. kick Roy in the side.

Melvin: Shut up, Rob. Turns to face the corpse. Rest in peace. He spits on the dead body’s face.

Suddenly the door is busted down and a cop emerges from the doorway.

Cop: You’re both under arrest.

Robert: he killed our cats! As he says this, he points accusingly towards Roy.

Cop: Yeah yeah. The cop cuffs them both and they go surprisingly willingly.

Scene: Once Roy is left on the ground alon, he slowly sits up. This is his spirit rising from his body. He stands alone and looks around.

Roy: Crap. What happened?

Just then, a mysterious figure appears. Roy’s body tenses. Ready for attack if defense is what is needed.

Roy: Who are you and what do you want?

Figure: What does it matter who I am, when I know what you crave?

Roy’s body relaxes and he looks at her, both amused and curious.

Roy: Oh? And what is it that I crave, might I ask?

The figure smiles, slightly unnerving Roy. The figure starts to pace around Roy, who spins with her to keep eye contact.

Figure: You want revenge. You want to see them crying ou rin pain and agony at your very hands.

Roy: And…you can help me with this, uh, revenge?

The figure stops and smiles at him.

Figure: You’re a very smart lad. Yes, I can help you get what you want. Trust me, if you come with me, then you will not die alone.

The figure holds a hand out to him. He glanced down at it and then smiles, taking it within his own.

Figure: I won’t let you down.

The woman leads him off the stage.

The cop takes in the struggling murderers and throws them into an imaginary cell. Move around naturally but don’t made sounds. Narrator comes out. Come up with corresponding, silent motion while narrator is talking.

Narrator: Caught in a murder, two brothers were taken to jail. One dependent on the other. How well can sanity stay behind stone and bars? It didn’t take long for Melvin, the older of the two brothers, to make the decision to bust out.
With a loose brick and fingers, you can do a lot. They were able to make a deep tunnel to escape towards freedom, outside of the prison. Little did they know, the freedom they were about to find, wouldn’t be a freedom they wanted, or expected.

narrator exits

Melvin is busy chiseling away at an imaginary wall where the tunnel is. Robert is out of the way, ready to disguise the hole on the command of his older brother.

Melvin: Good, good. We’re almost done.

Robert sits up

Robert: Yay! We’re gonna get out of here and we can get some new cats and have a happy life.

Melvin: Whatever, just quickly cover this up. It’s almost check time.

Robert quickly does as he’s told with a smile upon his face. They quickly sit down as they hear the cop coming.

Cop: Alright, cell check. Both of ‘ya out.

Melvin and Robert both stand outside the cell and watch as the cop half-heartedly searches through the small cell.

Robert: Act like you’re whispering and say, Why don’t we escape now?

Melvin: Because then we wouldn’t have enough time to get away from this place.

Robert: Oooooooh.

Cop: You’re good to go. Locks them back up and once off stay say. light out.

Melvin: alright lets do this

The boys work quickly and silently in the background as narrator come onto the stage. Once the actors are in the forest, have Roy stand in center stage, acting as if he were a tree.

Narrator: Two brother, both murderers worked swiftly. It took them only an hour to finish their job and they didn’t waste any time to escape. They slithered thorugh the tunnel and emerged into a cold, bitter night. They were both too engrossed with scaping that they couldn’t feel the death hanging heavily in the air. The full moon shown brightly and they swiftly ran into the forest that lay not too far off.

Narrator exits

Robert: Brother, this place is kinda creepy.

Robert wraps his arms around himself, suddenly feeling cold.

Melvin: Don’t tell me you’re scared.

Robert: No, it’s just…

Melvin: he turns around to face his brother, smiling, to say, You are scared. You little-

Melvin suddenly trips over a large root that falls in his back. Robert automatically starts laughing, holding onto his stomach to keep from falling.

Melvin: Stupid tree. Kick it after saying this.

Tree: Stupid inbred hick.

The tree suddenly come alive, stopping the loud laughing of Robert and the vines reach around Melvin’s neck. Melvin struggles to get free, but the branches are to thick and strong to grip.

Tree: If you think you can kill me and go on with you merry little life, then you should learn a lesson quickly. If I die, I’m not going alone.

The struggling continues on for a little while. Robert stand still, unable to move from the shock for his brother. Soon, Melvin’s struggling subsides and he sage to the ground. Dead.

Robert runs back in the direction of where he came from.

Robert: My brother! The tree killed my brother!

Cop: There he is! Get him!

Cops tazer the small boy down and arrest him yet again. They lock him up and ignore the cries.

Robert: They killed my brother.

The strength gone from struggling, his cries begin to grow weak and he realized no one is listening onto him. Narrator walk onto stage.

Narrator: Always dependent on another, Robert didn’t know how to live without his protector, without his older brother. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to live, how to move on. His brother’s death haunted his dreams and kept him up late at night, screaming. He couldn’t go on like this. Perhaps, there was someone out there that could save him.

Narrator exits and the mysterious figure appears yet again.

Figure: Young child, what’s wrong?

Robert: In a voice near tears, My brother’s dead. I don’t know what to do.

Figure: Oh yes. The loss of a loved one. It’s difficult, almost impossible to survive sometimes.

the figure nears him and rests a protective hand upon his shoulders.

Figure: I know ho to help.

Robert quickly looks up into her face.

Robert: You do? How? Help me.

She kneels in front of him and takes his hand gently into her own.

Figure: you can end it all. Just take you last breath and you can be with your brother again.

Robert: Can I really? Will I be able to see him?

Figure: oh, of course, and you can see all of your cats.

Robert: Really? I wanna go. I wanna see brother, and my kitties. Help me. Please, save me.
the figure flips his hand over so his palm is facing upwards. She strokes it twice and looks up into his eyes.

Figure: Just close your eyes and think happy thought.

Robert does as he’s told. He closes his eyes and smiles.

Robert: I’m coming, brother.

Robert’s breath come to a halt and he slumps over. Dead.

Fin!!!!

Very, very interesting for sure. I don't know anything about plays so I can't really give a good critique. Although some of the scenes did seem kind of unrealistic...but I guess that's the point of it, huh?? Or maybe it was just me *shrugs* Not sure what else to say...interesting lol

I know little about plays, but I do understand the art of it.

1.) You have a few typos, read through it and you'll see what I mean.

2.) Though it's interesting, I had trouble believing any of this. Sometimes seeing is believing, but I think believing is seeing.

3.) character diolouge wasn't that realistic either. Two kids kill someone and think nothing of it, not going to happen. Plus if I was dead and was visited by a spirit i would piss my pants if I could.

Even so it's a nice plot and has a but load of potential. over all, I liked it. (Thumbs up)

Thank you!!!!

heh, like I said, only had a few days to work on, wasn't supposed to be long, and I had to work with kids that didn't like acting (including myself XD) yeah, I didn't have it saved on this computer, so I just started re-typing it and didn't bother looking it over, just wanted to see what others thought of it.

I'm happy you guys at least found it amusing!!!!1 It's my first play and I'm happy it's good according to you guys ^.^

I know some about plays, so if you want to continue with this play and make it a little better, I'm going to give you some tips on how to do that with two main parts of your play.

Characters: You have some really memorable characters in this play. However, they all seem to have the same personality (mostly in the beginning. You develop individual characters better towards the end). You want each character to be their own person throughout the whole play. Depending on how deep you want to go into character, I would suggest taking some time and writing some info about each character so you can get a better understanding of them when you are editing your play. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself when trying to make your characters individuals:

What is the characters...
- Height?
- Weight?
- Skin color? (this is important when using language dialogue for your character)
- Education?
- Hobbies?
- Living Situation?
- Disposition?

Stage Direction: I noticed that you don't really have your stage direction properly formatted for a play. Writing stage direction is a hard thing to do, it requires you to see everything in your head and then to write down what you think your characters should be doing on stage. One thing you must remember when writing your stage directions: plays are meant to be seen on stage, not on the page. You tend to write out the stage directions as if the audience has the script right in front of them. That doesn't really help the actors, directors, stage crew, audience, etc. with seeing your play on the stage. Keep your stage directions as compact as possible, with active verbs. In other words, instead of "Jennifer is sitting on the carpet" at the opening of a play, "Jennifer sits on a carpet." Also, let your characters do the acting, not your voice. For example, for group stage directions you wrote:

Melvin pins Roy to the ground and digs in his pocket. A fork appears in his hand (because you can’t have knives in school) and he stabs him until he stops moving. He stabs him once more to be sure of his death. Roy’s dead.

Your voice is in those stage directions. Instead, when doing group stage directions, like above, cut it down. For instance:

[Melvin pulls Roy to the ground. Pulls fork out of pocket and stabs Roy. Roy stops moving.]

When working with individual stage directions, do the same thing. For example, you wrote:

Robert: Take that you…you cat killer. Kick Roy in the side.

For individual stage directions, put them in brackets in front of your characters line. You keep them short and to the point like I did above for the group stage direction.

Robert: [Kick Roy in the side.] Take that you... you cat killer.

I didn't read all of it. It was kind of confusing and weird and some of it didn't make sense.