Theatre ...

and playwriting

The first play I was in. I’m the one on the left.

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All children love to play, right? We make up stories and act them out. If we’re lucky, we get to see live theatre at some point. Maybe we act in a school play, or maybe we just watch them. I didn’t see my first professional theatre production until I was twenty-seven years old. I was president of my social security in Anchorage. We often volunteered for local events, and I volunteered to usher a theatre production of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence. It was the first time I’d seen actors enter from the audience -- and I was hooked.

A few years later, I returned to school. I attended the University of Missouri-Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology; Missouri School of Mines when I was growing up in Rolla). Did I study theater? No. Not only was it not offered as a major, but my intention was to get an education that would allow me to get a better paying job. Actually, I probably would have opted for a writing degree, but only the Columbia branch offered anything on writing. I considered political science, but decided on Economics.

The university didn’t have a theater major, but they did put on student plays now and then. I attended and loved live theatre, no matter the subject. A standout for me was their production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

While I was still in school I somehow heard about street theatre. Wow, that sounded like something I wanted to do. Shortly after, I left school and moved to Kansas City, Missouri.

That’s when I met Kate Kasten, we co-founded Actors’ Sorority, and I began to write plays. From 1977 to now, I’ve regularly written plays. There is nothing more fun to me than putting on a play. So I keep writing them, submitting them, and sometimes producing them myself.

The first play I wrote was about conjoined twins. A musical, of course.

I’ve written seventy plays so far. Here are some of the things I’ve written about: conjoined twins in a conscious-raising group; death; cowboy sisters; Nancy Drew; Tennessee Williams; Tennessee’s sister Rose and lobotomies; beauty standards; menstruation (it’s a musical); insanity; growing up; fighting queer oppression; butches; witches; Marilyn Monroe; my mother; my grandmother; the Alamo; an opera named after my sister, but about killing wolves; a cat; a cougar; lesbian relationship as a comic strip; dating via Zoom; a vampire; myself as a child; my son after he was kidnapped; the Bobbsey Twins; 9/11; forgiving the impossible; robots; murder; Ella Baker; Pearl Bailey; the Arab Spring; a lesbian nun; a cable guy; and I’m working on a play about a mobster.

I also write theatre reviews, which means I see a lot of live theatre. This weekend I reviewed two plays: The Bed Trick by Keiko Green, and Primary Trust by Eboni Booth. Next weekend it will be Magnetic Electric and Design for Living.

Not every play is great. But all plays have one thing in common: someone wrote a story and others acted it out for an audience’s viewing pleasure.

Me writing something in 1973

Do you attend live theatre? Why or why not? Do you have favorite plays? Favorite playwrights? A favorite genre of play (drama, comedy, absurdism, Shakespeare, etc)? Do you love musicals? or hate them? indifferent? I’d love to continue the conversation.