Perform a Play in Various Languages
Senior 3 · Music
Perform a Play in Various Languages
4 lessons
Lesson 1 of 4
Creating a play: structure and conflict
25 min
From a sketch to a play
In S1 you performed sketches in Kinyarwanda, and in S2 sketches in English or French: short scenes built around one situation, often funny, often half-improvised. A play asks for more. It tells a whole story, its characters change, and something important is at stake from beginning to end. What holds a play together is conflict: a problem that pushes the characters until something has to give.
Throughout this unit you will follow one example play written for this course, The Broken Tap, and then create and stage your own.
Definition
Play: a story written to be performed by actors on a stage, told through dialogue and action. Example: The Broken Tap, a play in three scenes.
Act and scene: the large and small parts of a play. A new scene usually means a new place or time.
Plot: the chain of events in a play, each one causing the next. Conflict: the struggle or problem that drives the plot.
Protagonist: the main character, whose problem the play follows. Antagonist: the character or force that stands in the protagonist's way.
The example: The Broken Tap
In a village in Rulindo District, two neighbouring families share one water tap. A wedding is a week away. When the tap breaks, Mugabo and Mama Keza each blame the other's children. While the adults argue, the children walk to the valley for water, and Keza, a Senior 3 pupil, loses the hours she needed for revision before her exams. At the village meeting the quarrel boils over, until Keza stands up and asks: "Whose water is it?" The families agree to share the cost and the work, and on the wedding morning the water flows again.
Play structure: the plot mountain
Most plays follow a shape that rises and falls like a mountain. Tension grows until the highest point, the climax, and then the problem is worked out.
| Stage | What it does | In The Broken Tap |
|---|---|---|
| Exposition | introduces the place, the time, the main characters and the situation | the village, the shared tap, the coming wedding |
| Inciting incident | the event that starts the conflict | the tap breaks |
| Rising action | the problem gets worse; tension builds | blame, long walks for water, Keza's lost revision time |
| Climax | the turning point of highest tension | the quarrel at the meeting; Keza speaks |
| Falling action | the results of the turning point | the families agree to share the cost and the work |
| Resolution | the new situation at the end | water flows on the wedding morning |
Types of conflict
| Type | The struggle | In The Broken Tap |
|---|---|---|
| Person against person | two characters want opposite things | Mugabo against Mama Keza |
| Person against self | a character struggles with a choice or a feeling | Keza: help her family or protect her revision time? |
| Person against society | a character against a group, a rule or a custom | Keza speaking up at a meeting of adults |
| Person against nature or circumstance | a character against forces beyond human control | the dry season and the long walk to the valley |
A play or a sketch?
| Sketch | Play | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | a few minutes | from about fifteen minutes to several hours |
| Story | one situation, often comic, with a quick twist | a complete plot with conflict, climax and resolution |
| Characters | few, quickly drawn | developed characters who change |
| Script | often an outline, partly improvised | a full written script |
| Staging | few props, little or no set | set, costume, props, sometimes lighting and sound |
Worked example
Worked example: build a plot from an idea. Idea: a pupil finds a phone on the way to school.
- Exposition: Ishimwe, a quiet S3 pupil, walks to school past the market in Musanze.
- Inciting incident: he finds an expensive phone on the road.
- Rising action: friends tell him to sell it; the phone rings and a worried voice begs for it back; a teacher notices he is distracted.
- Climax: at the market, the buyer is counting out the money, and the owner, an old woman, walks past calling for her lost phone.
- Falling action and resolution: Ishimwe returns it; the woman, a retired teacher, offers to help him with his exam revision.
- Main conflict: person against self (honesty against the wish for money), with person against person (his friends).
Video: "Plot Structure", Mr. Armstrong Teaches. It explains the plot pyramid: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. As you watch, place each event of The Broken Tap on the pyramid.
Tip
Find the climax first. When you plan a play, decide its most tense moment before anything else; then build the events that lead up to it and the ones that come after.
Warning
Common mistakes. (1) A "play" that is a list of events with no conflict: nothing is at stake, so the audience loses interest. (2) A resolution that arrives by magic, with no cause in the plot. The ending must come out of what the characters do.
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Practice
- Give two differences between a play and a sketch.
- Name the five stages of the plot mountain in order.
- What is an inciting incident? Give the one in The Broken Tap.
- Name the type of conflict: a girl is afraid to sing in front of the school.
- Name the type of conflict: a village must rebuild after floods destroy its bridge.
- Write a five-stage plot outline for a play about a football team that loses its coach a week before the final.
- Your group's play ends when a rich stranger suddenly pays for everything. Explain why this is a weak resolution and suggest a better one.
Show answersHide answers
- Any two: a sketch is shorter; a play has a complete plot with conflict and climax; play characters are developed and change; a play has a full written script; a play uses more staging.
- Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.
- The event that starts the conflict: the tap breaks.
- Person against self.
- Person against nature.
- Model: exposition: the team trains for the final; inciting incident: the coach is transferred to another district; rising action: arguments over who leads, a lost friendly match; climax: at half-time in the final, losing, the captain must decide whether to change the plan; falling action and resolution: the team plays together and, win or lose, learns to lead itself.
- The ending does not come from the characters' own actions, so it feels unearned. Better: the characters solve the problem through a choice or effort shown in the play, for example by organising a fundraiser.
Remember
- A play has a complete plot driven by conflict.
- Exposition → rising action → climax → falling action → resolution.
- Conflict: person against person, self, society or nature.
Sources and credits
- Lesson text, the example play The Broken Tap, plot diagram, tables, worked example and practice: written by Ganzaa.
- Video: "Plot Structure", Mr. Armstrong Teaches, embedded from YouTube.