Six Plays

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.