Plays 3
An Opening at last
My new play collection is available to buy on Kindle, with the paperback coming out next month. I’ve previewed the book’s introduction below.
One of the plays, An Opening in Time, has not previously been published. The play is dear to me — I wrote it in 2014, believing that I might die soon. My aim was to write a play that distilled my previous work and integrated new insights I had during my illness. I wanted it to be accessible to a range of audiences, and also deeper than anything I’d written before — a dramatization of my most intractable problems.
Initially it seemed like the play would have a major NYC premiere — but as is often the case, that big production never came together.
What I was told was the play’s selling point — a strong role for a woman in her 60s or 70s — turned out to be the sticking point. Though a major star briefly circled it (until her producer came to a reading and dissociated while watching), other actors at the necessary level of fame were not interested — strengthening my sense that famous people mostly do not want to play flawed and vulnerable characters in new plays (in established classics it’s fine).
Longer-term, though, there’s hope: a famous friend told me she’d play the part when she ages into it — so stay tuned for a revival in 2045…
One page only and I am hooked