Six Plays

Six PlaysFrom the Author Most of my creative writing was conceived while I was working as a college professor but executed only after I retired. Its a great luxury to have been able to write without the need to earn a living from that writing. The needs of commerce and the inherent integrity of authentic expressionat least for melong ago parted company. That is not to say, not to claim that authentic expression has no commercial value, only that it has a more

From the Author

Most of my creative writing was conceived while I was working as a college professor but executed only after I retired.  It’s a great luxury to have been able to write without the need to earn a living from that writing. The needs of commerce and the inherent integrity of authentic expression—at least for me—long ago parted company.  That is not to say, not to claim that authentic expression has no commercial value, only that it has a more important origin. It was, however, always my intention, that any play written by me would be produced, and I therefore attended as carefully as I could to the feasibility of their production.

Having directed plays in my academic background, I learned early on that a play needs to be considered from at least five important viewpoints: the playwright and his/her love of language; the actor, the director, the producer, and the stage designer.  I endeavored in these plays to create the terms by which each of these differing viewpoints might be variously satisfied.  

I suppose a play trapped on written pages is an audition of sorts. It seeks to belong: first, to be cast into the imagination of its reader, later perhaps as a visual construct either in the mind’s eye or in actual staged presentation. As such, a play is only ever a starting point; asking only that it be let in, admitted if only for a short time.  But, as I have so often learned in life, even brief encounters can sometimes change the very direction of a life.  

Or so it seems to me.