Plays Portfolio

Staged Reading, July, 2009 at The Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School of Happy Valley, Ojai, CA

Performances April 23 - May 30, 2010 at The Elite Theatre Company, Oxnard, CA

I’ve been writing short stories, novels and screenplays for years, but haven’t written a play since college, when my two short plays, The Left-Handed Hummingbird and Dinner, were presented at the Moorpark College Forum Theater. As ETC’s Artistic Director, one of my tasks is finding plays and directors and compiling the season. And it hit me. Why not write a play, have a staged reading to get feedback, re-write it until it’s where it needs to be to take into rehearsals, then include it in the ETC season. The ETC Board supported my efforts, and I thank them so much for this opportunity.

I knew I wanted to do something political. And I couldn’t recall seeing a play where the conservative viewpoint and philosophy were dramatized. But I didn’t want to write something that just bashed liberals and independents either. And I wanted it to have humor and some emotional connections between the characters. Perhaps because I am a professional private investigator, I have a strong interest in mysteries. I decided to put the two together and write a mystery and weave political issues into its plot line. During the play’s gestation, the political issues overwhelmed the mystery and my first few drafts would have ticked off everybody except the weirdest of the American right. So I re-wrote it over several months, trying to engage the characters with the elements of Dr. Paul LeBeau’s disappearance and the evidence against Dr. Vince Anders, and, in the summer of 2009, the play transformed into something closer to what you will see tonight.

On August 1, 2009, I presented a staged reading with some of the best actors in Ventura County at Zalk Theater in Ojai’s Besant Hill School of Happy Valley. The audience was given the opportunity to complete an evaluation of the play. And I was surprised to find that the criticisms were not down political lines (I asked for the political philosophy of each evaluator) but with the plot and characters.

I let the play finish its gestation quietly until early 2010, when it began to kick and squirm again in my mind’s womb. Then, right up to the time we began rehearsals, I tweaked the intricacies of the story and developed the characters, moving the political lines around so that the liberals weren’t villains and the conservative wasn’t a hero. That was probably the most “centering” issue with the writing: finding equilibrium in the political elements so that the story wouldn’t be black and white but find a beautiful gray.

This cast was instrumental in making important changes to the script as we worked the play in rehearsal. Delivery of the play began opening night and she is alive, well and happy to be in the world. She is my baby. I think she’s adorable. But if you don’t think she’s as cute as I do, just pinch her cheeks and say “Ah, isn’t she something else” anyway.