Play Pass: A Helpful Guide to Play Selection for Students

Play Pass is a method developed for giving students access to lots of performance materials in a short amount of time. The idea came from a literacy course that I took years ago that used “book pass” to helping students decide on what book to read.

For their first class performance, I want my Theatre I-III students to have access to a published play for them to gain familiarity with the play format.  I use Play Pass to help them choose a play that they would enjoy performing.

What you’ll need

• scripts that you have access to (5/student if possible)
• paper & pen for the students
• a timer
• Smart Board or white board for showing voting options (could print ballots with a list of the students play options, but this wasn’t time effective for me.)

How It Works

Every 5 minutes give student a hand full of plays to peruse.  After five minutes, have them write the title, playwright, and summary of the play they liked most in that five minute period.  Repeat this as many times as possible within a class period (45 minutes for me right now).  It usually takes us about 5 minutes to get started and a minute in between passes.  At the end of class, have students circle or highlight their favorite play from those that they wrote down.  They’ll pitch their chosen play to the class the following day.

Before Beginning

Before the play pass, tell students to consider the following for making selections:

• The number of students are in the class
• how many of those students will be performing
• how many students will the play require for tech (lights, sound, set…)
• length of the play (I usually allot 10-15 minutes/class performance)

Play Pitch

Once the Play Pass is complete and students have chosen the play that stood out the most for them, they will write a Play Pitch which includes the following:

• Play Title
• Playwright Name
• Summary of the Play
• Number of characters (m/f)
• How much time it will take to perform (if this isn’t written in the play notes, I tell them to assume that the play will take 1 minute/page of dialogue).

Once play pitch are written, everyone takes a turn pitching their chosen play to the class.  I require everyone to participate, and they must try to make sound convincing.  However, if they truly did not find a play that they wanted the class to perform, they can say so at the END of their pitch.  As students present, I type a table in Google Forms that includes each students name and play title.

Voting

Once pitches are complete, pull the list of students’ names and play options up on the Smart Board screen.  Give every student 2 ballots (blank, scrap slips of paper) to write down two play titles.  Have them choose two different titles, one of which can be the title of their own play if they choose.  This method keeps the voting fair and honest , since with one vote, most will simply vote for their own.  Students are always excited as we tally votes, whether their play gets chosen or not.
Allowing students the opportunity to have a say in their class play gives them a sense of pride in their class performance.  Once the winning play is announced, ask the student who pitched it if they’d like to direct the play.  Most say yes, but occasionally they pass.  If they say yes, tell them that the following day to state the name of either an assistant director or co-director from among their class mates.  Then do a read thru followed by casting.

Other Considerations

If you don’t have access to many scripts for the students to look at, you could either let them look at the books that the publishers send for us to order plays or go to the publishers websites online.  After the pitch, you could order the play(s) your class chose along with royalties.

A subscription to Plays Magazine allows you royalties to all of their plays, past and present, as well as permission to make copies for class performances.  My collection of these scripts that I use for my Play Pass that has saved me a lot of time and money.  Plays Magazine also has archives of past scripts online for subscribers, although students would not have access to these archives.

In Conclusion

Deciding on a class play can be exhausting.  Allowing students to help with this process will not only lighten your load as teacher and/or director, but will also help to give students a sense of ownership in productions.  I hope that you find Play Pass to be useful in helping students make performance selections.

For more information on Plays Magazine and many more of my favorite script sources, check out my My Top Script Sources.

My Top Script Sources