Then: theatre professor/director
Now and then: playwright
Once upon a time...
there was a six year old Dianne
who stood SRO with adults to see Othello at the same University where she
was daily lost after Kindergarten among display cases of All The Shells
and Stones and Butterflies and Stuffed Creatures In The World... this child
for whom worlds and ages of understanding came thundering through fingerprinted
glass, and through a box with lights in the middle of a wall where many
people told a story they all knew by heart so we all would know what was
the world. There were wonderful others, but none with effects as adhesive
as these: those who point wordlessly to nature, and those who conspire
in groups to know and show through many ways of saying to eyes and ears:
the world.
BRING your children: Coming next/Coming
soon:
NEXT TO HER HEART OF PUREST GOLD
Full Length Musical Melodrama for
the Western Tourist Peanut Tossing Crowd, Timewarped Others and Fanatic
Families. Frightening.
Play FOR Children
THE TRIAL OF MOTHER GOOSE
My 2-act has been 'up on its legs'
four times over many years, first at USD and Huron College Theatres, later
directed/produced by Graham Thatcher, now of Periaktos Productions, for
Group Theatre in Rapid City, S.D. In 1998 THE TRIAL OF MOTHER GOOSE was
the premiere-events choice of new touring company ABC Productions, Moraga,
CA, under the direction of Rachel Hauser. Third rewrite completed recently,
publication now sought, and available for production.
Set: Stairs,
and boy's room at top thereof takes such addons as to quickly become a
dream-distorted courtroom, returning finally and quickly to the former
elements only.
Cast: 1 boy
as a third grader, 4-7 females (reporters, WWWinkie + any number to fill
out odd sized jury can be played by females). Males: 7-10 (more for jury
as desired)
Synopsis: A
boy's room at the top of the stairs. After his mother's goodnight, young
Thomas rebels against his father's off- target bedtime attempts to be a
good parent, (Mother Goose rhymes? Give a kid a break!!!). Tom's sleep
is rocked with dreams of conflict and remorse, and we can see them, the
scene changes fluidly and startlingly with the madness of dreaming. This
is a courtroom? MG's on trial for shocking crimes? Tom's dad is her D.A.???
The P.A.'s a nightmare unto his own, the judge is not judicious, the jury
is malicious, Wee Willie Winkie as clerk of courts? A witness list is so
familiar: Ol' King Cole, Humpty, all the Goose gang, and Thomas himself
as cross examined by his own father? It all turns on this: justice is our
bedrock. Mess with that and it's a quake. The jury abdicates decision and
calls to Doubting Thomas for the verdict. He wakes screaming in a sweat
and running up the stairs is Dad, now eager, too, to find mutual ground.
They talk calming talk, each on eggshells not to retrace rocky ground,
and what they're looking for, they gladly find.
Performance Royalties ~ $35.00/1st,
$25.00/subsequent
Scripts ~ $7.00
Plays AS Children
Like this bluehaired woman, Celtic
goddess of creativity/fertility/fire and healing: Brigantia, I'm pregnant,
but with acts of possibility, plays for adults now swimming and kicking
as I spin, knit and gather yarn. Got strands? E-Mail me at the address
below to inform with snipets, to clarify my perceptions within these subject
matters (not, I vow on Brigantia, for movie of the week agonies, though
maybe it would so seem!!).
Do-be-do-be-do! Highly, maybe overly,
achieving...putting it all out? Or, just gladly enjoying life...taking
it all in? (or walking a balanced middle line ?)...how'd this all (really)
happen to be what's you?
Attention Deficit Disorder in Women/girls...how
does it play out in your life, and how do you respond to it, fight against
it, live with it, around it (when you remember to). Attention Deficit Disorder
in Men/boys: talk to me, brother. I know a little. Tell me a lot. Attention
Deficit Disorder in the Family: hoping,coping, avenues to acceptance? Personal
theories/tricks of the trade.
Personal solutions for normalization
of life after traumatic events/making it through and getting on.
Unmothered/Mothered by the Unmothered/Children
as mothers, voluntary interventions by sensitive adults in the lives of
essentially unparented children: how we survive, evolve, become.
