The Short Play Project: Elven Council (2020, 2026)

2020

Starting in 2019, I began writing one short play, pretty much every day. I mean, I did wrote a short play every day, some of them weren't any good so I never typed them up. But I did create a tremendous number of three or four page plays in a very brief time.

The day the quarantine began, in March 2020, I put out a call for anyone who wanted to participate in a "social distance art experiment" to make a video from one of (at this point) hundred of my short plays, which I would then edit and post. This became The Short Play Project.

Two of my friends recorded their precocious four year old twins to perform the script Elven Council. I forget the prompt, it may have been "fantasy" or "power" or anything, really. I was inspired by some of the poorly thought out plot points of certain works of fiction -- take the Horcrux (please.) I will break up my soul and place it into other things. Nothing dumb about that.

2026

Douglas Adams mocked this in one of the Hitchhiker books; Why have a dozen or so different forms of identification (bank card, passport, work permit) when you can have all of them -- and your DNA and fingerprints -- all packaged in one handy card!

Then someone steals it. Anyway, that’s the joke.

So, back in 2020, the twins put on their Elsa and Anna costumes, created a masterpiece, and the rest is history.

This week, the girls (now ten) recalled that time they made a video about an elven council and were trying to remember the details. Their mom suggested they all watch it, and so they were inspired to try it again.

The coda is entirely their own.

You can watch the entire Short Play Project here.