Many novelists all their lives want to write
a play. Many try it. Henry James, Ernest Hemingway,
Graham Greene spring at once to mind, but I don’t
doubt there are many others. I wanted to write a
play for so long I finally asked myself, Why don’t
you sit down and do it? And so I did.
In Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina
in 1986, Milly Barranger, head of the drama
department, asked me if I had a play script. Well,
yes. Assured she wouldn’t dream of actually
staging it, I was amazed when she arranged a public
reading of it by actors from Playmakers Repertory
Company. At this point it attracted the interest
of David Hammond, Playmakers’ brilliant
artistic director. He decided to produce it.
The sprawling script he had to work on presented
so many problems in cutting and shaping that I
often wondered if the effort was worthwhile. But
together we managed to work up a passable play. It
was well-attended in the Paul Green Theater.
It gave me pleasure in many ways. I saw
first-hand how a director and actors work together
in production and rehearsal. I had the thrill of
seeing my characters actually speaking my lines on
stage rather than on page. (I think this is why
novelists want to be playwrights.) Also, though
the play has never been produced elsewhere, I had
some vital characters I could draw on for stories
in future, especially the leading role, an enigmatic
Southern lawyer, Edward Glenn. He has appeared in
two short stories so far.
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