It begins with the scream of a train whistle...

Of such honors as I have received, none has come with quite the same aura as the Whitfield Cook Prize, which my new play A Maze received this year. The award is the legacy of screenwriter Whitfield Cook, who collaborated with Hitchcock on Stage Fright and Strangers on a Train. I am awed by the idea of having profited... from murder.

Now available with a suggestive cover.

Aphrodisiac is now available from upstart young publishers Samuel French (founded 1830).

    AVERY
What’s the worst-case scenario? He’s hiding something terrible. He’s done something we never thought he was capable of. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of having an affair. I would have thought he was too averse to risk.

    ALMA
Like Bill Clinton?

    AVERY
Maybe Dad didn’t see it as a risk. Maybe he saw it as part of the job. He’s a consummate professional.

    ALMA
Like Bill Clinton.

    AVERY
Best-case scenario. Benefit of the doubt. It was an innocent friendship. Here’s this young woman. She and her friend — what’s the friend’s name?

    ALMA
Trish.

    AVERY
She and Trish are grad students in public administration. They go on what they call “political field trips” where they visit the offices of House members and have their photo taken with them. One day, they visit the representative from Ilona’s home town. Trish talks herself into an internship in the office, but Ilona, Ilona’s already interning at the Bureau of Prisons. But she and Dad get to be friends. They call each other often. Maybe there’s an element of flirtation, maybe not. Then she disappears. He is questioned. He tries, perhaps misguidedly, to protect her reputation, and as a result he is crucified in the media. Anything could have happened to that girl. She could have let herself get picked up by a serial killer in a bar. She went jogging alone at night. This is not a bright girl.

    ALMA
You don’t know that. She was an independent adult.

    AVERY
She was having an affair with a married womanizer congressman.

    ALMA
Have you never been involved in a stupid doomed self-destructive affair? Love, sex, whatever, makes you do stupid things. That doesn’t mean you’re stupid. That doesn’t mean you routinely put your life in danger.

    AVERY
May I answer the question? No, I’ve never been involved in a stupid affair.

    ALMA
Have you ever been involved in a smart affair?

    AVERY
Well, Alma, I’ve not been a perfect man.

    ALMA
Funny.

(Pause. AVERY sips his beer.)

    AVERY
One thing you can say: now everyone in the 18th district knows who their congressman is.

Now available in blood red

Millicent Scowlworthy is now available from Samuel French. (Aphrodisiac is coming soon.)

PORTER: Remember when you’re a kid, and you get in trouble for fighting? You know the other kid started it. You know you’re innocent. You try to explain this, but the adult never wants to know who started it. Never cares who’s to blame. Everyone gets in trouble equally. So one of the first things you learn about civilization is that there’s no justice.

7M, 5F. Perfect for extremely violent high schools.

Scenes from the JAW Festival

Photos from the workshop of A Maze, and one critic's thoughts, on the Portland Center Stage site. I am hat guy.

Oregon Cheddar

This week you ought to be in Portland, Oregon, where some of the most fabulous people in American theatre (as well as the present writer) can be found in the same building.

The playwright as first-round draft pick.

New experiences, 2010:
1. Successfully searching the restaurant supply stores in Chinatown for a sandwich board (for a play about Nazis).
2. Repeatedly driving past scary political billboards in Western Pennsylvania (while simultaneously producing a play about Nazis).
3. Seeing my name listed under New Acquisitions.

A play written over the internet, yet good.

In Which Direction Home?, eight of the member-directors have created new shows which will be brought from six different countries and are, according to their website, “inspired (more or less) by Homer’s epic poem.”

As producer Cathy Bencivenga says, “I hesitate to call them all plays."

[Jake] Witlen’s production has a text that was “wiki”-ed by 10 playwrights from around the world.*

— from the Brooklyn Rail article about The Internationalists' Which Direction Home? Festival, which starts July 21.

*Among them your faithful blogger.