Script Apart: ‘Sing Sing’ Screenwriters on the Structural Power of Putting on a Play

A theatrical round of applause please, readers, for a microgenre of cinema we don’t talk about often: films about the staging of a play.

In recent years, screenwriters have cooked up several critically adored movies centered around stage shows. 2023’s mockumentary Theater Camp, for example, told the hilarious, moving tale of a camp-drama troop putting on a musical titled “Joan, Still,” and the result was one of that year’s most cult-beloved movies.

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Last month saw a new addition to the films-about-plays canon—Sing Sing, from writer-director Greg Kwedar and co-writer Clint Bentley.

Talking this week on my ScreenCraft-supported podcast, Script Apart, the pair made a good case for why there’s something inherently cinematic about tales in which characters band together to put on a production.

Crafting a Simple Yet Powerful Structure

“We always say that simple is the edge of a knife,” Kwedar says, explaining how there’s something straightforward about the structure of a movie about putting on a play: there’s a clear goal for all the characters.

There’s an effective “ticking clock,” as time runs out before the all-important performance. Act one can see your protagonist assemble their actors. Act two can see those characters grapple with inner demons they need to overcome to succeed in the play. And act three is the performance itself—a final spectacle for the camera.

If you keep that simple structure in place, you create room to “actually spend time with the characters you’re mining. The things happening in their relationships. The nuances within their individual stories. That can be endlessly complex,” the writer-director says.

There’s “something beautiful about watching people come together to make something greater than the sum of their parts,” he adds, before correcting a common misconception that emerging screenwriters often have.

In writing, we’re always asking ourselves, what are the stakes? In films about plays, there’s usually a reason why the play matters so dearly to the protagonist. The fate of the universe might not depend on them—but the emotional stakes for this character “can be life or death. This is their everything.”

Have a think about what your own movie about a play might look like who the characters are, why the play matters so intensely to your lead, what sort of strange supporting characters they might rope into this ambitious production, and what hardships they’ll have to overcome in the process.

This might just be the template for the next Sing Sing or Theater Camp. The show, after all, must go on.

Listen to the full interview above.

Al Horner is a London-based journalist, screenwriter, and presenter. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Empire Magazine, GQ, BBC, Little White Lies, TIME Magazine, and more.

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