Ethno-Playography

Here's how to write salable plays, skits, monologues, or docu-dramas from life experiences, social issues, or current events. Write plays/skits using the technique of ethno-playography which incorporates traditions, folklore, and ethnography into dramatizing real events.

The sample play and monologues portray events as social issues. One true life example for a skit is the scene in the sample play written from first-person point-of-view about a 1964 five-minute train interlude when a male passenger commands the protagonist not to cross between cars while the train is in motion.


The passenger stands between the cars next to his wife who says timorously, "Let her go, dear," after the wife notices the young protagonist wears a wedding ring. The protagonist tells him she's pregnant, returning from the john, and needs to get back to her family.


Instead, he squeezes her head in a vise-like grip, crushing her between his knee and the wall of the train. He kicks at the base of her spine, yelling stereotypical ethnic epithets while passengers ignore events.


After the sample play and three monologues for performance, you will have learned how to write ethnographic dialogue and select appropriate scene settings. Also included are e-interviews with popular fiction writers.