a skit I wrote "You can't buy a ticket"

[JustSomeGuy]

I wrote this skit after watching my girlfriend and her missions group performing at a church. It's still something of a work in progress. There are still some parts that don't seem to fit well enough. I would appreciate any helpful advice.

I should explain too that they have a puppet stage they use sometimes that has an open top curtain about three feet high and about seven feet wide.

“You can’t buy a ticket”, Airport Skit
Draft 2
February 22, 2005
Airline employee is standing in the middle of the stage (behind the first section of puppet stage if available). The passengers will be lined up near the employee to the employee’s right. They need to be lined up so that the employee is visible as are the passengers who have already been dealt with. As the passengers come up to the airline employee and are turned away they need to walk off to the right (stage left) and stay talking amongst their selves until the second airline employee comes out. They need to stay out of the way of the employee’s view of the audience. If the puppet stage is available a second Airline Employee will be hidden below the curtain of the first section. If the puppet stage is not available then the second Airline employee will just be standing to the right side of the performance stage with their back turned to the audience until the end.

Airline Employee: Last call for flight 777

(Passenger 1 walks up)

Passenger1: Hi, I’ve been coming to this airport every week for years and I’m so glad I finally get to take this flight. I should have a reserved ticket.

Airline Employee: I’m sorry but I can’t give you a ticket for this flight.

Passenger1: WHAT!!! Why? I told you, I’ve been coming to the airport EVERY WEEK for years and now I’m ready to go on my trip. I deserve a ticket. LET ME ON THE PLANE!

Airline Employee: Coming here every week isn’t what matters. That won’t get you a ticket. Please step aside so I can help the next person.

(Passenger 1 steps to his right, out of the way but on stage)

(Passenger 2 walks up)

Passenger2: Hi, I’m so glad to finally be here. I haven’t come to the airport every week but I did give some money to fix up the carpet in the terminal. I believe you have a ticket for me.

Airline Employee: I’m sorry but I can’t let you on the plane.

Passenger2: ARE YOU CRAZY!? LOOK LADY, I PAID for that carpet you’re standing on, OK! I am OWED a trip on that plane. Now let me ON.

Airline Employee: The carpet is nice but it’s not what matters. Just buying carpet isn’t what buys you a ticket. Please step aside so I can help the next person.

(Passenger 2 steps to his right, out of the way but on stage. Starts talking with Passenger 1)

Passenger1: Can you believe the nerve of that woman

Passenger2: No kidding, after all we’ve given to this place.

(Passenger 3 walks up)

Passenger3: Wow, I’m so excited about this trip. I’ve been studying up on planes just for this trip. I bought every one of the “Learn to Fly” videos that Philip Conman made. They were great. I even bought his book “Flying for Nimrods”. I learned so much about flying. So, where is that ticket?

Airline Employee: I’m sorry but there is no ticket for you

Passenger3: What are you talking about? Look here, I KNOW all there is to know about that plane out there and flying and everything. I bet I know more than your pilot does.

Airline Employee: Well sir, I can assure you that our pilot is MORE than qualified for this flight. But knowing all about the plane and how it works isn’t quite enough to get you a seat on the plane. I’m sorry. Now please step aside so that I can help the next passenger.

(Passenger 3 steps to his right, out of the way but on stage. Passenger 3 joins in conversation with Passenger 1 and 2. Just low angry mumbling)

(Passenger 4 walks up)

Passenger4: Whew, I’m glad I made it. I’ve been driving people to this airport in my cab for years. I always tell them what a nice place this is and how great the planes are. Now it’s finally my turn to fly on the plane. I’m so glad I didn’t miss it. Can I have my ticket now?

Airline Employee: I’m sorry but I can’t give you a ticket

Passenger4: Excuse me? I don’t think you understand pal. I BROUGHT PEOPLE HERE who have flown on that plane out there. I made sure they got here on time and didn’t forget anything they needed for the flight. Of course they always seemed to bring some things I thought were unnecessary but you still let them on. Why won’t you let me on?

Airline Employee: Just because you helped other people get here with some of the things they needed for the flight doesn’t mean that YOU have all of the things you need for this flight. I’m sorry but would you step to the side so that I can help the next passenger.

(Passenger 4 steps to the side and joins Passengers 1, 2 and 3)

(Passenger 5 walks up)

Passenger5: Hey, this is just like I pictured it. I’ve never been to an airport before but some frat friends of mine used to joke about it. I never really saw any need to come by. I was pretty sure I could find my way here when I needed to take a trip. So, I expect you’ve got a ticket for me. I hope that there are some more cute chicks like that one back there on the plane. <Gesture toward wall where imaginary terminal is> Man, she was hot. I wish my wife looked like her. What’s the harm in a little flirting, eh? It’s not like we did anything.

Airline Employee: I’m afraid you are not prepared for this flight and I can not give you a ticket.

Passenger5: HUH? Now I admit I’ve not been here before but I think I know the basics of how the whole flying thing is supposed to work. I have a trip to make so I come here and I’m not a really bad person so I get through security and onto the plane. I mean that’s the way it’s supposed to work, right?

Airline Employee: I’m sorry to tell you that you are mistaken. There is more to getting a ticket than just being a MOSTLY good person. Now please join the others so that I can help the next passenger.

(Passenger 5 steps to the side and joins Passengers 1, 2, 3 and 4)

(Passenger 6 walks up)

Passenger6: I didn’t think I would be taking this trip so soon. But I guess it’s time so I have to go. I came to the airport a lot because I wanted to know about the planes and where they go. I was even lucky enough to meet the pilot of this flight and he told me that he liked me so much that he would pay for my ticket himself. I couldn’t believe that because it is a VERY expensive ticket. I’m so thankful that I found someone as nice as your pilot who would do that for me. I couldn’t have afforded the ticket on my own. He must be really rich because he told me that he does the same for anyone that asks him. I bet he is rich enough to own this whole airport.

Airline Employee: OH Yes Sir. The pilot told me ALL about you PERSONALLY. Here is your ticket <hands ticket to Passenger6>. You have a first class seat waiting for you right this way. <Motions off stage behind> By the way, his father actually owns the airport.

Passenger6: Oh, thank you very much. <Walks off stage behind Airline Employee>

(The Passengers who are left get very angry that someone with apparently special privilege has gotten on the plane when they couldn’t. They approach the Airline Employee with Passenger1 in the lead as spokesman)

Passenger1: Now look here. It is completely unfair that he should get to go on the plane just because he knows the pilot. That’s favoritism and you’re discriminating against us. We have as much right to fly on a plane as he does.

Airline Employee: Well I really don’t know what you expect me to do. Boarding for flight 777 is now complete. None of you has a ticket for this flight.

Passenger1: Oh yeah? Well it occurs to me that there must be lots of different planes around just as good as your plane out there. We’ll just take one of those. I mean what’s so special about your plane.

Airline Employee: Yes, there is one other flight here that you can take.

(Airline Employee 2 comes from the side of the stage or pops up from behind the right hand side of the curtain)

Airline Employee2: <grinning evilly> Flight 4355 is now boarding. No ticket necessary.

 

[Ariella]

i can easily seeing this being done as a skit ... great message included and really easy to follow, well done!!!

 

[JustSomeGuy]

i can easily seeing this being done as a skit ... great message included and really easy to follow, well done!!!

Thank you very much for saying that. After I got no replys for so long I was afraid that people didn't like it. You might think I'm silly but I really felt moved to write the skit. It really felt like the skit was writing itself. I only did two revisions of it. When I got to the price of the ticket I became very emotional.

 

[Lessien]

Great skit!

 

[shernren]

This is not a skit, but yours reminded me of something I wrote a little earlier.

Ticket

"Excuse me, sir, may I go in to watch the show?"
"Do you have a ticket?"
"A ticket - why, yes! Here it is."
"Jolly good. And do you know the Producer?"
"I can't say I do, but I'll have to go see Him after the show and get to know the great mind which - "
"Then you can't enter."
"But I gave you the ticket, didn't I?"
"This is a theater where you have to know the Producer to join the show."
"But - but this can't be! I paid my dues for this ticket, you know!"
"Even so, rules are rules. I doubt you'd enjoy it, though. You'd have to know the Producer to appreciate His masterpiece. It's about Him if you're wondering."
"The ticket-seller told me I'd get in with this alone and I didn't have to do anything else."
"And was his name Jesus?"
"I don't think…it sounded something like, but - no, he wasn't."
"There's only one authorised Representative, you know. The Producer isn't someone you can get to know well that easily. Some say He demands a lot from those He wants to know. But there was one, and only one, representative He appointed who could fulfill all His demands and still be one of us. If you didn't buy your ticket from Him, it can't be valid."
"How was I to know all this?"
"You should have read the fine print."
"The fine print?"
"This! Foolish theater-goers. The only reason the false ticket-sellers get any business is because the masses don't care these days. There was a time when people actually asked about the fine print - rare these days, I'm afraid to say. People get scared by words like commitment, sacrifice or surrender. And the cross just seems to scare them away. Nope, that's why ticket-sellers came up with their own tickets, with the attractive offers upfront and the small print about the price tucked away in a small corner, with the smallest print possible. About how this show will make you feel good. It does, but there's a lot more to it."
"But…this says my ticket should cost me all I have."
"And so it should. You get what you pay - everything."
"So I can't go in?"
"No."
"But I've emptied my schedule for this!"
"Who hasn't? And yet many have already come with useless tickets, and many more will come after you. It's a pity, really. There are no second screenings; this, the real show, will last forever, and everything else before it has only been a shadow of theater and a veiled rehearsal. But I doubt you'll suffer much from having nothing left. After all, you'd never even imagine what those inside will be enjoying for eternity."

 

[JustSomeGuy]

I like that. It's very much in the same vein as the skit. I need to do some editing on the skit and come up with a version that doesn't need as many people to perform. The way to go may be something like your story, where there is only the ticket taker and one other person. I would probably do two because I like having the guy that gets on the plane.

 

[Ariella]

it is really easy to feel vulnerable and start doubting what we wrote when nobody responds or when they take time to ..... and no, it doesn't sound silly, just that God moved you to write what you did.

 

[shernren]

Maybe you can have one person who made all the wrong choices - the same person who went to church every week, donated a lot, knows a lot... etc., and another person who simply knows the pilot. Maybe that would sharpen the contrast.

But at the same time don't emphasise too much what the second person didn't do, but what the second person did do. That is more important. The main theme should be that "whatever else you do, the relationship with God is the most important..."

 

[ConstanceB]

Nicely done, both of you! How do you see it being used?

I've "sold" two skits: one was for a United Way "street theatre" presentation (I won $100 for first place in the contest). With the second, a professor had been asked to write something and had no time and little interest; she "passed" and offered the opportunity to me, and my skit was included in the Methodist Women's Global Ministries book of "playlets", and I earned another $100. (Long ago.)

I'll offer some general observations. If it's a "skit", make sure that the set and costuming are simple and cheap. If it takes longer to set up than the skit is long, I'd work on it some more.

Keep the dialog flowing quickly. Try the lines aloud yourself and see if they flow well.

If you use 8 or 10 characters, use fewer actors and some can play 2 parts. A skit like yours is often used by youth groups and performed in front of adults. Youth groups often overlook performances that take a lot of characters, because they don't want to risk having to cancel if some players don't show up. Think about this: Your "customers" could leave and circle back around with no greater change than adding a Groucho Marx nose & glasses. If you have to, just have that character walk behind, eyes down, and take his/her place as the customer at the end. If this is a youth skit, it adds a lot if a guy adds just 1 or 2 items (say, a headscarf & 1 curler) and comes back as a female. Seems like a cheap shot, but it goes over well with the audience, and you'll get a spin on a character unlike any else.

Question: I may be overlooking something, but is there a significance to "the other" flight number? I kind of expected six six six, typically the sign of something evil as the sevens are associated with godly things. I would give them equal weight: both mean something, or neither does. (Again, I may just be ignorant of the significance.)

A comment about the similarities of the two works. If it happens within this group, I'll bet a potential editor/publisher will have seen even more of a similar thing. They won't buy it, and they won't pay for it, and that's something to consider.

If you are writing something for your church, or your youth group -- just something so the program can show it has been drafted by a member -- keep it small-scale so you don't end up accused of plagiarism. To many people, "plagiarism" means you copied another writer precisely, so "The big tree fell down!" can be written "Down fell the big tree!" and there's no problem. Not so.

Here's one example. Janet Dailey wrote those little 189-page romance books for a few years, and churned out about one every month. Lots of readers preferred to read her books because she could make an old story seem fresh. At some point, she became convinced she could move into the Danielle Steele category, left her publisher, and wrote a number of longer novels. Once a writer read a book of hers, and although it wasn't written the same (for instance, Wyoming instead of Texas; rancher instead of farmer; blonde hair instead of brown; the love of his life is 27 instead of 25) chapter for chapter, the novel covered the same events. Janet Dailey was sued, admitted she was overwhelmed and took the easy way of letting someone else's plot carry her, she ended up paying a lot of money, and if she's actually written a novel since then, nobody has published it.

This example is scarier. Martin Luther King Jr., an American hero and galvanizer of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, is famed for his "I Have a Dream" speech. How can a man of such modest upbringing be so eloquent? About ten years ago, a graduate student decided to go through Dr. King's doctoral thesis, word by word, reference by reference. At that level of scholarship, copying words is a problem rarely. However, this student discovered that there were works cited out of order, which is a sign of poor scholarship. More importantly, ideas that Dr. King was credited with creating, because of his scholarship and great mind, were not original: he was citing the work, but claiming as his own the conclusion of another author. It caused quite a stir in university circles; the academic community eventually concluded that the good that Dr. King's life brought to us was more important than discrediting his thesis before the whole world. Don't anticipate that the publishing world would offer any one of us the same measure of forgiveness.

Is this post helpful? cb

 

[shernren]

if I'm not mistaken the 4355 is leet-speak for hell, isn't it? but I think it would be hard for the audience to get that reference. Why don't we just chop that, instead have the first flight attendant leave, show the rest of the passengers / the other passenger frustrated and furious at missing the flight, and cut the lights and end the show. There goes a useless role! ^!^V

Actually to me, this is not a very "evangelistic" skit per-se...it doesn't confront the choice a non-Christian has to make i.e. that of believing. It seems to confront the choices a Christian makes in not being a hypocrite, in securing one's salvation (what part works play, and what part grace plays - not this forum. But we do agree that a "Christian" who isn't living Christian probably isn't going to heaven, right?) ... anyway, it seems that this may be a "challenge" skit, a thought-provoker before a sermon or for backslidden Christians. Your thoughts?

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Maybe you can have one person who made all the wrong choices - the same person who went to church every week, donated a lot, knows a lot... etc., and another person who simply knows the pilot. Maybe that would sharpen the contrast.

But at the same time don't emphasise too much what the second person didn't do, but what the second person did do. That is more important. The main theme should be that "whatever else you do, the relationship with God is the most important..."

Shernren,

I've been thinking about that exact thing. I was told that as the skit is now it would be hard to perform because it requires eight people. If I had one person doing all the bad stuff, it would cut the number in half. I think that I will probably make the one person a cabby that came every week and brought people. I think I can combine everything that way.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

if I'm not mistaken the 4355 is leet-speak for hell, isn't it? but I think it would be hard for the audience to get that reference. Why don't we just chop that, instead have the first flight attendant leave, show the rest of the passengers / the other passenger frustrated and furious at missing the flight, and cut the lights and end the show. There goes a useless role! ^!^V

Actually to me, this is not a very "evangelistic" skit per-se...it doesn't confront the choice a non-Christian has to make i.e. that of believing. It seems to confront the choices a Christian makes in not being a hypocrite, in securing one's salvation (what part works play, and what part grace plays - not this forum. But we do agree that a "Christian" who isn't living Christian probably isn't going to heaven, right?) ... anyway, it seems that this may be a "challenge" skit, a thought-provoker before a sermon or for backslidden Christians. Your thoughts?

Sorry for quoteing you twice. The number 4355 isn't really leet speak it's the numbers on a telephone for the letters h-e-l-l. I had thought about 666 and that had been suggested to me while writing it. But I just had a hard time writting that and I worried that it might offend some people too much.

I expect that some people will be offended by the skit and I want them to be. You're right that it is very much a challenge to people that call themselves Christians but aren't. When I got the idea to write it I was watching my girlfriend's Christian performance group packing their stuff after a service. There is a guy in the group that is very unchristian, to the point I wonder why he's in a group like this. The thought came to me when I looked at him "you can't buy your way in". Then I started thinking about how many people I've seen in churches that act Christian on Sunday but are anything but the rest of the week. I have another incomplete skit I wrote yesterday that deals with the issue some more.

As for the plagerism deal, I don't think our two peices are close enough to be considered plagersim do you?

My intent with this is for anyone who wants to use it to use it. I really don't mind how it's used as long as no money is made beyond paying for making the copies at Kinko's or whatever.

 

[shernren]

Well, I'm not going to pick any bones with you for happening to have the same idea. =D I'm open source too ;D as long as it's not used for profit...

Yeah 666 would be pretty sensitive. Maybe forget the numbers and the obvious reference to heaven and hell... what if it's the same guy, but he keeps begging and begging and begging, giving different reasons to try and convince the flight attendant. But the attendant is firm about it... s/he isn't convinced whatever reasons the passenger gives. Then the second guy comes in, talks, walks right past the first guy and boards! Then the flight attendant leaves also. And finally the guy is left alone, and then - lights out ... 3 people only! haha.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Hey, that's a pretty good idea. I could end it with "boarding for flight 777 is now complete". I really like the idea of begging. THat's a very good way of keeping the point 1, point 2, point 3 thing that I had going but doing it with one person. Thanks so much for the advice.

 

[shernren]

no problem! =D