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01 October 2024

Posted by Harley Truslove

Dialogue Duels & Police Vans

We started with a fill-in fun, with Ali pairing out writers up in order to complete a dialogue duel sheet. After a few moments of working together our writers gave us a Bonnie-and-Clyde type couple bickering over the scene of a murder, a farmyard fracas of two friends letting all the animals loose, and a sibling scuffle over silverware.

With no context Ali got our writers to pick from a pair of red pills or a blue pills… or pink pills, seeing as there were six participants this evening. The pills were in fact coloured Smarties and were left at the side by the moment as our writers continued with their next task: they were handed a worksheet with instructions saying they had found themselves in the back of a police van, and to explain why their character had ended up there - a legitimate crime? An innocent bystander caught up in the hubbub, or something else?


We had 6 characters:

  • a frazzled student who tried to save someone after they were being stabbed. She definitely didn’t murder anyone…

  • an art student who had their sketchbook taken during the ruckus.

  • a cleaner dobbing in co-worker Sally, accusing her of starting the riot.

  • an upper class lady who was caught on CCTV attacking a security guard with a Louis Vuitton.

  • a retiree checking in on her friend who stabbed someone with a knitting needle during the riot.

  • a bricklayer who happened to find Sally looking at a dead body stuffed in a supermarket freezer. (this was an unplanned surprise - two of our writers just happened to use the same name!)


Ali then got our writers to pair up with a partner who had the same colour smartie. The challenge was for their two characters to have a conversation as they left the police station and have our writers compose it as a script.


Our art student met up with the cleaner and groused about conspiracies to keep people’s personal belongings, blaming it all on Sally again! The Louis Vuitton attacker cornered the student who tried to save the stab victim and wouldn’t leave them alone. Finally, the retiree and the bricklayer were discussing a spree of knitting needle murders…


Finally our pairs switched again, and this time the setup was the characters in a different place some time after the police incident, meeting by coincidence. This ended with our Louis Vuitton attacker getting murdered via knitting needle as Sally's spree continued...

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