Three Plays in Six Weeks

Sometimes I can't write a thing. I'm like an artist with a blank canvas and no scene, model or still life to inspire me. But I have been on a tare of late, and finished three plays in six weeks. Granted, two of the plays are only ten minutes or so long.

The first play was the one I mentioned in an earlier blog about John Milton in prison writing Paradise Lost. I titled it Satan and Me. My working title was Reason to Rebel, the name of my grandson's band, out in San Diego, which seemed to fit my play as Milton's justiication for the trial and overthrow of the king of England is mirrored in his apparent justification of Lucifer's attempt to overthrow God in his epic poem, but I knew I would not continue with the plagiarism of my grandson's title in the final naming of my play on words. I called it Satan and Me because my hunch is Milton identified with his angelic, albeit fallen, character.

The second play I titled Anything A Man Can do... a phrase which would be immediately followed in some people's minds with the phrase "a woman can do better." Edna St. Vincent Millay is often referred to as the "New Woman" because of her rebellion against all the restrictions placed upon 19th and early 20th century women. The Suffragettes won the vote for women; VIncent, as Millay preferred to be called, won the right to act like men, including smoking and drinking and having affairs. Many of her early poems resonated with other women's feelings of rebellion. Millay, of course, also wrote great poetry, and did better than many men in doing so.

The third play was in response to an invitation to participate in a sort of competition. A friend of mine, Bob Richardson, whose musical, Lighthouse, I co-authored, emailed me an Opportunity for Playwrights flier. Thomas Moser, whose chairs have become world famous, is also a patron of the arts. He has an art gallery at his headquarters it seems, and he annually sponsors a competition in which people are asked to submit 10 minute plays which will be performed in the Spring in Kennebunk. The catch is the plays have to have as one of the principle characters a Thomas Moser chair! Well at first I just laughed and was about to toss the flier, when I had an idea, and I wrote my ten minute play in little more than ten minutes. I paid homage to the author of Waiting For Godot and titled the play Waiting For the Chairman.