I really enjoy browsing old web-blogs, like this one called Everything2 that @chungkingexpress turned me on to in that interview he did with that guy who works on Stacker News.
Anyway, I came acorss an idea when poking around there and I wondered whether something similar could be done here in ~the_stacker_muse. I wondered also whether the Musers (thanks @SatAttack for coining the term) might chime in on it. Hence this pow-wow.
The idea is a writing contest, and it is called:
Gone in Sixty Seconds
In short, a poster named TenMinJoe hosted a sketch-writing contest in which the winners got to see their work performed live by a small theatre company they were a part of. Here were the rules:
-Each piece must last no longer than sixty seconds. -The work must be wholly original. -The work must not have been performed before. -No material will be accepted if it is considered offensive or in bad taste. -Write-ups are to be placed in this node
Personally, I am a huge fan of sketch comedy. I always found Monty Python's Flying Circus infinitely baffling and equally entertaining and when I watch I try to imagine what joy it would have brought me to have tuned into the BBC at a time before YT and the internet to bear witness to their antics. Of course, there are others, like Tim and Eric, World Peace, Eric Andre, to name a few. Sketch comedy, afaict, seems to make up a great portion of viral content spiraling around on all those doomscrolling apps -- you know, the ones where you get 30 seconds to sell your soul to the algo or otherwise get lost in oblivion? It has somehow become the medium championing shock-value, silliness and the absurd (no -- not the Saturday Night Live kind of absurd.)
TenMinJoe goes on:
So, you can see here that we want short, sharp scripts. So short in fact that calling them 'plays' might be stretching it a little. 'Sketches' perhaps. Comedy is the most likely candidate for such a short slot, and is always much appreciated, but by no means consider yourself limited to humour! Moving an audience with tragedy or thrilling them with drama in a mere sixty seconds is a challenge worthy of the talented writers we have here.
You can read all the details (and contest entries!) on the original thread. It has last been updated in 2004, over twenty years ago, even before the first bitcoin block was mined! Imagine that. No such thing as bitcoin. No Instagram or Tiktok. It was even before YT's co-founder, Jawed Karim, uploaded his landmark video rattling on about elephant trunks. I digress.
Over to the Musers
So, up front, I am not a member of any theatre company (now), nor do I fancy myself a very good actor (though I have dabbled); nor do we need to give the incentive of seeing the winner's sketch performed live to solicit good writing as was proven by Fiction Month.
BUT, how cool would that be?
I think a contest like this would be so cool, especially if there were someone willing to put themselves out there to present the winning sketch (bitcoin influences maybe?)