Can you please give me an opinion on my synopsis for a play?

[CloudDog]

I am hopefully not breaching share your work
This is my first post please just delete if inappropriate

Thanks


A schizophrenic woman, (Leia), is a non-compliant patient in a psychiatric hospital. She is taunted by demons and speaks to ex lovers. These are portrayed by Actors but are parts of her inner world. She falls in love with a new patient, an aggressive vagrant, 30 years her senior. Their delusions run parallel, and they have a "folie a deux". Their 'love' and delusional 'marriage' is a not deemed to be appropriate by the staff and he is sent to a locked ward.

During and after being released from hospital she meets the hero of the play (Anthony), who can travel between different realities through a portal run by Spirits who serve Realities like plates of Sushi in a Sushi Bar. They go on adventures together which cause her to relapse. The conflict is between actual delusions and magical journeys with a safe partner, (the world of this play, but also an allegory).

Leia is now compliant, allowing her to only see the 'real world' of the play, however as a life long Schizophrenic she continues to have some problems - but these are manageable because of the support of Anthony.

 

[Boneman]

Well, I see a beginning and a middle, but no end. If this is a synopsis to attract attention, it could be a little tighter - whose story is it? You tell us Anthony is the hero, but it seems to be Leia's story. And there's so little detail of the why of Anthony, if he is the main character. What's your logline?

 

[CloudDog]

Well, I see a beginning and a middle, but no end. If this is a synopsis to attract attention, it could be a little tighter - whose story is it? You tell us Anthony is the hero, but it seems to be Leia's story. And there's so little detail of the why of Anthony, if he is the main character. What's your logline?

Thanks

Ah yes I get your points.
Have I not made it clear here that it is a love story?
I have made the mistake of sending the synopsis to mental health focused theatre companies so it would be useful to hear back from someone in response to this possibly before my synopsis was perfect (never a good sign) - I felt like I'd been been patent but obviously not!
Anthony is the hero in the sense that he "saves the princess" a bit but Leia is the main character yes.

Longline would be:

A schizophrenic woman meets and falls in love with a man who can travel to different realities.

Thanks again!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

For me, it's nowhere near hooky enough.

Schizophrenic Leia is taunted by demons and speaks to ex-lovers. When she falls in love with a new patient, who is thirty years her senior, their delusions run parallel, forming into a "folie a deux". Their 'love' and delusional 'marriage' is a not deemed appropriate and he is sent to a locked ward.

After her release, Leia meets Anthony, who travels through different spirtual realities. They travel together, but the conflict between the magical journeys and her delusions causes a relapse in Leia. Anthony refuses to give up on her, and his love brings her to point where the "real world" is her place of safety.


These are portrayed by Actors but are parts of her inner world -- this I would leave out. It's up the director how he portrays them.


"folie a deux" (Ha! I'm using that one in a current wip. )

Some questions: why mention the vagrant? What is the purpose of him in the query? Similarly, why mention folie a deux -- it seems to go nowhere in the query.

 

[ZombieWife]

The first part sounded like a play unto itself. It's almost like multiple plays run together. Plays are pretty compact from my experience. Not:

A guy goes to this place. Meets this girl. Does X, Y, and Z.
Then he goes to another place. Meets completely different people. Does X, Y, and Z.
(etc.)

You could write an entire play on this:

A schizophrenic woman, (Leia), is a non-compliant patient in a psychiatric hospital. She is taunted by demons and speaks to ex lovers. These are portrayed by Actors but are parts of her inner world. She falls in love with a new patient, an aggressive vagrant, 30 years her senior. Their delusions run parallel, and they have a "folie a deux". Their 'love' and delusional 'marriage' is a not deemed to be appropriate by the staff and he is sent to a locked ward.

If you want people to care about the main characters and secondary characters, then you're going to need to spend some time with this. As you have it now, if this is 20 minutes, that's not a lot of time to get to know everyone, AND to hook into the plot, AND to see a "romance" take place, AND have a delusional marriage.

Then she gets out..... You probably need 10-15 minutes of transition there, but if you haven't spent enough time in the first section, nobody's going to care much at this point.

THEN you get to this....

During and after being released from hospital she meets the hero of the play (Anthony), who can travel between different realities through a portal run by Spirits who serve Realities like plates of Sushi in a Sushi Bar. They go on adventures together which cause her to relapse. The conflict is between actual delusions and magical journeys with a safe partner, (the world of this play, but also an allegory).

Which seems like the more interesting part. You have what? 30-40 min. tops to spend here now because you've had to build up all that backstory?

My opinion would be cut the entire first part out. Start her during her transition out of a facility where she's "cured!" She meets this new guy and her backstory comes out as she gets to know this guy. Then, people can focus on:

1. getting to know the MC well enough to care (and not feel like they're on a roller-coaster of "and then... and then...."
2. how she relapses (perhaps in a good way). That's the meat right there.

Just my lame opinion!

Good luck!