Last weekend, we had our best vernacular poet/author Dheeraj Kumar hosting a session. Dheeraj has managed to impress us on a repeated weekend basis with the wonderful symbolism and aesthetic sense he imbibes in his work.

To be honest, that was one of the best play-writing we every did. When you combine alternative history and one-act play writing, it’s just the winning combination. And Dheeraj came up with this magic formula and helped us all write masterpieces.

The Exercise:

Write a short ten-minute play descriptive (with no more than 3 characters). Use any historical event and apply a ‘what-if’ alternate to design your play.

Ten-minute plays are popular these days for basic economic reasons: they are relatively cheap to produce and if you do an evening of 10-minute plays you can count on a decent attendance because most writers will invite friends and family.

Fun fact: Our plays were enacted, instead of the regular read out session!

An overwhelming overdose of fun – even that would be an understatement for the session. Some of the most hilarious and some of the most heart-warming plays were written this weekend, all thanks to Dheeraj!