Break A Leg

Re-uploaded from Ludum Dare 32.

Break A Leg

The time has come: you can finally get rid of those scene-stealing hacks in your theater group.  You’ve been setting this up for months. Talking to the folks backstage. Making sure they are willing to drop the counter-balances at your signal. Flattering the other actors, to make sure they take part in the production. Pretending to listen to their flattery, so they aren’t surprised that you are willing to work with them.  In the last few weeks, you’ve been working out the timing. Where you’ll have to be on the stage.  How to signal where the sandbags should be dropped. And, of course, how to look good doing it. We wouldn’t want the audience to get a bad show, now, would we? Even if a few of the actors... break a leg.

Instructions

First you must choose a starting position: where you will be at the beginning of the play. Such fine actors as yourselves will of course want to start with your own spotlights, so no one will start in the same portion of the stage.  The play itself will be broken up into a series of acts, each consisting of four scenes. In each scene, you will either saunter across the stage to a new position, or stand in place and soliloquize. You’ve found that soliloquies are a great opportunity to signal your accomplice in the rafters. Unfortunately, you will have to plan out each act before the curtain rises, in order to make things look professional.

For each scene, click on either a portion of the stage to move to, or a sandbag in the rafters to drop on the stage. A tile showing your action for the scene will appear, so you don’t lose track of where you are. If you decide you need to change your action, clicking on the tile will reset it.  When you have blocked out actions for each scene (or decide to just wing it, if you want an acting challenge), then start the act with the old standard: “Break a leg!”

Any actors who are hit by a sandbag will, “sadly”, break a leg. They will be taken backstage for the rest of the act, so their remaining actions won’t happen. In the next act, they will come back in the same location where they were injured (“The show must go on!”), but a second broken leg will send them home.

Credits

Brian Williams

Brian Trotter

Thomas Gruenewald

Chandler Norris

Adam Williams