Find me in print HERE!

Several of my plays, and scenes from my plays, recently became available in print.  You can find my work in the following places.  Buy a copy today!

 A scene from "Heads" -- my Iraq hostage drama -- is available in the new Smith & Kraus anthology, "The Best Men's Stage Monologues and Scenes 2009."

The scene is between journalist Michael Apres and photojournalist Jack Velazquez.  After a violently failed attempt to escape and a surprising revelation, things get very real between them.

My short play "The Edge of Ross Island" -- winner of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's IN10 competition -- is now available in Eleven Eleven, an online journal of literature and art, produced out of the California College of the Arts.  The play follows a Portland, Oregon cop as she tries to talk a jumper down from the Ross Island Bridge.  Sometimes you find something out about yourself when you try to help someone else...

In January, my full-length play "Song of Extinction" -- winner of the Steinberg Award from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, University of Oregon's EcoDrama Festival, the Ashland New Plays Festival, and Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards -- was published in Dramatics Magazine.  They did a beautiful job, commissioning original artwork for the magazine cover to go with my play. 

Last, but not least...  "Song of Extinction" is now in print in a beautiful acting edition from Samuel French.  The cover artwork has been adapted from our original Moving Arts production art by designer Josh Worth.

I'm proud to see my work in print.  It's a lovely feeling to hold your own book in your hand, after all the love and work and sweat and tears that goes into the writing of it.  I'm about to have another birthday -- and I couldn't think of a present better than this.

Happy Easter!

Poem 2 - Bitter

We drove all day in the baking sun and all night through deep chocolate dark in my cinnamon-rusted Fairlaine through air that smelled like butter and gooseberries.  The trunk was full of gooseberries we'd picked at your mother's house and didn't know what to do with.  But when she'd asked us to take some before everything rotted out there, we couldn't say no.  We ventured out into the abandoned field, where you never played when you were a kid.  Her grating voice carried down to us, "Pick more!"  She gave us old Cool Whip containers to put them in.  Lots of them.  "How much Cool Whip can the woman eat?" I said, but you didn't laugh.  We picked until our fingers tingled, then drank another beer with her on the porch, then whisked ourselves away from there like we were being chased.  You didn't say much.  So I turned the radio up and rolled the windows down.  And wondered why you'd wanted me to see where you came from.

Poem 1 - Fishing

She dangles her hand down along the battered side of the old row boat.

He's fishing.  He's rowing.  He's catching freshwater lake trout for supper.  He's trying, anyway.

She lets her fingers touch the surface of the cold, cold water and tilts her head back so the sun can lick her throat.

He doesn't say anything about it, as speech and fishing are strange and inappropriate bedfellows in his mind.

She lets the fish nibble drops of salty sweat from her wrist and watches a bald eagle drift in wide circles over the lake and island.

He changes bait from worms to eggs in failed attempts to lure anything in.  He watches the sun settle into the tops of the douglas firs.  He rows them back to the campsite.

"I wasn't hungry for fish anyway," she says.  She smiles as he builds a fire and sets up the tent and rolls out the sleeping bags.  

She catches him.

Where do character names come from?

I joined this blog discussion here, where a playwright/blogger was asking the universe how people come up with names for their characters.


Sometimes a name will spring into my head as soon as a character starts talking to me.  But here are some of my sources for inspiration when that doesn't happen.

Character names are super important to me, and I always try to get them set before I even start in with the serious writing of the play. What a John might say is so different from what a guy named Patton or a guy named Francis or a guy named Sue might say!

One thing that has helped me is the profusion of baby name sites on the web. Not just American ones, either! Is your character Cambodian? Chinese American? Bolivian? Just google baby names and the country of choice, and you'll get all kinds of possibilities.

Another nice tool I found somewhere online was a government site that listed common-ness of names by birth year. So if your grandmother character was born in 1938, you can see what names she might have had, statistically speaking. More likely a Delores than a Brittney!  Very helpful!

I’ve also been known to skim whatever books I’m near and use various combinations of authors names in a pinch.

How do you name your characters?

A real nice clambake over at Reprise

Check out the beautiful, slightly minimalist production of Carousel over at Reprise.  I thought it was gorgeous.  The only problem was, I'd forgotten what a sad musical it is, and had to wipe my eyes on my sleeve by the end.  It's directed by Michael Michetti, who is co-artistic director of the Theater @ Boston Court in Pasadena.

Kyle T. Wilson blogs about bobrauschenbergamerica

I've found myself increasingly interested in Robert Rauschenberg's work over the last few years, and am excited to see Charles Mee's play about him (and a lot of other things) at [Inside] the Ford, produced by TheSpyAnts as part of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission's wonderful Winter Partnership Program.

I've bought my ticket, but got a preview of coming attractions from playwright Kyle T. Wilson on his blog.  It's a great post about the play, and what brought him to it.

I can't wait to go see it!