What The Hell With The Hat?

What the Hell with the Hat?
My ongoing Playwriting Diary 2015 - 2017
Ed Ballou
GINO
Funny, cops said that guy’s dog grabbed a cap off the top of my blown-open safe - a
horse racing cap - even had some jockey’s colors on it..
(Looks at JD)
.. red and gold..
(Pauses, looks at Baker)
Tom said, must of took two guys to move that safe..
BAKER
(Pauses, turns to JD)
What the hell with the hat?
JD
(Pauses)
Just wanted people to know I’m still a winner..
- from ‘Push The Lever’, by Ed Ballou
Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Monday, February 23, 2015: I confess I didn't do any writing this week - I've been busy
correcting English essays and lesson planning for my job - but that's just an excuse - I'll
try and have something to post next weekend… Ed
Wednesday, March 4, 2015: Sorry, no updates to "Crest" - been assigning and grading
essays, and getting my Freshmen to write their own fairytales... Ed
Sunday, March 8: Okay, I made some changes to "Crest", last night for four hours -
nothing monumental, but I made the dialogue Beckett-like - the most amount said, the
least amount of words - when I first started writing, one of my influences, besides the
East European Avant Guard writers, was Samuel Beckett and his play, ‘Endgame’-
the second play I ever wrote in1972, was a one-act called "On The Celebration of Being
Alone", written with Beckett's style in mind - it was produced at San Jose Sate in 1972 -
you can read this short one-act on scribd.com - just type in my name, and you'll see the
scripts of all my 12 plays - 6 one-acts, 6 full-lengths.. my next thoughts are about writing
a play about the supposed alien, J-Rod - I could go full-length with this - it'll be a
balance with the one-act play I wrote about Neanderthals, called "Last Teller"..
which you can read on scribd.com… Ed
Sunday, March 15, 2015: Still no work on "Crest" - I did go over the formatting on "The
Glimmer", minor stuff, prior to sending it electronically to an actor, Michael Lange, who
might function as advisor, or Assistant Director, for the April 25-26 staged readings I'm
hoping to pull off - the Director, Sylvia Baeza, is still in New York until a week before the
readings, when she'll come back to run rehearsals - I somehow have to cast the play
myself - I'm in touch with another actor, Paul Loper, who appeared as the Mike
character in the production of ’The Glimmer’ in New York, when it was still a one-act -
I am presuming he is going to play Mike in these readings, as well as maybe help me
cast some of it - I have been in contact with a theater in Oakland, The Flight Deck - they
have the weekend open, but are more expensive, and there is a Presbyterian church,
which is cheaper, also in Oakland - churches always seem to have had a connection
with theater - I've had four one-acts produced in them - and I'm waiting to hear back
from this one - one thing I plan to do at the readings is sell official shares of "The
Glimmer" to potential producers at $250 a share - also to sell them on-line on this
website - and I hope to have the readings streamed up to this website as a live video,
free, as are the tickets - for the production, hopefully in August, I plan to sell tickets at
$25 each, as well as video-stream each of the 12 performances for some modest
amount - anyway, here goes! - Ed
Tuesday, March 24, 2015: Still no work on ‘Crest’ - haven't heard back from the
Rockridge church, so have been in touch with The Flight Deck at 15th and Broadway in
Oakland, California - Paul Loper, a fine actor has been helping me cast the play -
Michael Lange is unavailable, but I did send him a script electronically - Paul
is contacting some of his actor friends to see if they're interested in any of the roles,
although we probably will have auditions somewhere on April 5 - we will have to scale

back our readings to just one, as Paul has a time conflict with Sunday evening - I hope
to get out to The Flight Deck to sign a contract with a woman named Champagne for
Saturday, daytime, for the April 25 reading - the director, Sylvia Baeza, will be out here
from New York City to hold rehearsals the week before the reading - I will be selling
Producers Shares of the play at $250 for a 1% share of any net profits from ticket sales
and "live-stream" sales at $10 a pop for each of the actual 12 performances somewhere
in, I hope, August, when Sylvia is available, again - I need to raise $25,000 to mount this
production (the April 25 reading is free, and the theater holds 99 people) - my
businessman friend convinced me to make the shares good for 1% of all net profits from
the play, if any, over the next three years - kind of a governor; I better buy some shares
myself, but I guess I can roll with it - I also have to post a DBA (Doing Business As) in a
local newspaper and file for a business license with the County as Glimmer Theatre -
so, that's the latest - come on by The Flight Deck for the reading April 25! - Ed
Sunday, March 29, 2015: Nothing on "Crest", but I'm proceeding forward on the
"Glimmer" reading - lots of e-mails between Paul Loper - who is the original "Mike" in
the "Glimmer" video and trailers on this site, and he is to be "Mike" in the reading -
Sylvia Baeza, the director in New York, who is flying out to direct the reading, and
myself - I went to The Flight Deck Thursday, and met with Champagne, and she is going
to send me a contract to sign - I also have to get one day's insurance - Paul has cast an
actress friend of his, Annie Larsen of San Francisco, to play opposite him as Lil, and he
is waiting to hear back from a Brazilian actress about the part of Maritza - George and
Fred we may cast when Sylvia arrives April 17, but she wants a pool of actors to
audition, so I'll have to put out notices - and find a place to hold the audition - things are
proceeding! - I 'm still going to sell GlimmerShares of the production, and 3 years
after, for 1% at $250 (includes 2 tickets to the August, I hope, production) - I'll sell them
at the reading April 25 in Oakland, and here on this website, shortly - tomorrow I will
probably have to set my daily ads to only the SF Bay Area, or make a new Google ad
for the reading - check this website for updates, even if you don't see an ad… Ed
Monday, February 16, 2015: This is the latest draft of my other current Work-in-
Progress, ‘Crest of the Waves’ (the Work-In-Progress I have been switching off with is
called ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’, about 1066 and all that - it's further down this page, if
you scroll) - sorry! - again I forgot to upload Saturday! - I've been working full time, and
my writing has slowed - this play is close to me, oral history from my family, and it's hard
for me to get the proper perspective or voice to make this play work - I only made some
minor changes to the play, at the end, the Eight Bells scene - this is the play about the
old sea captain, his grandson, and his grandson's African-American girlfriend.. check it
out.. Ed
Monday, April 6, 2015: Still nothing on "Crest" - I have been focusing instead on
producing a staged reading of the full-length "The Glimmer" April 25, 1-3 pm, at The
Flight Deck theater, 1540 Broadway in Oakland. An audition will be held April 18 at The
Jeffrey Bihr Studio on Miles Street in Rockridge, Oakland, for 3 characters in the play:
Fred, George and Maritza. Paul Loper is already cast as Mike and Annie Larsen as Lil.
The director will be flying out from New York for the audition, three days of rehearsals,

and the staged reading, to which you are invited. I'll keep you posted…contact me at
edballou@icloud.com for more info. - Ed
Tuesday, April 7, 2015: Mailed in the theater contract for the reading, along with the
money - now, I have to pay for the insurance - one actor queried me about the audition -
I am proceeding - I haven't written in months, am out of balance - I like my job and the
money, but it will be good to have time again to write and get something(s) completed -
if you're reading this, odds are you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, as I just changed
my GoogleAdWords location - I'll run my ad like this until after the reading, so I can
communicate locally and try and encourage people to come to the reading, as well as
maybe audition - will keep you posted… Ed
April 15, 2015: I believe I just uploaded the full-length version of "The Glimmer" - I
forgot, I only had the original one-act version up - sorry! - the audition is in Oakland this
Saturday, it's for the April 25 staged reading of "The Glimmer" - I'll try and post the
audition flyer and info on this website.. Ed
Wednesday, April 22, 2015: No actors for the April 18 audition, even though I advertised
it - what's going on here? - these are paid rehearsals, and production - the director and
I, and Paul Loper, the lead actor, scrambled to come up with a couple of other actors,
but we couldn't fill a major acting role, a Millennial, male, that we also needed - and, one
of the already cast actresses said she might have a problem making the reading, work-
wise - also, I was having a problem with the insurance company for the reading - so, I
decided to call off the reading - I hope to try again, when I, and hopefully Sylvia the
director, and some of the already cast actors, have more time to make it happen -
anyway, it's all over! - a failed attempt - now, it's on to August! - Ed
Tuesday, April 28, 2015: I haven't written in 4 months - my current job may be over this
Friday, so i should get back to writing - plus, I have to make the changes in ‘The
Glimmer’ script that Sylvia suggested, before the August reading - I'm going to try and
pony up the money for a one week rental of The Flight Deck theater for rehearsals and
the reading - they have a package deal - still, in all, it will cost me $5,000 - I feel, rent
the venue first, tie down the commitment dates, and then get the actors to commit -
instead of the other way round - line up the actors, and then, when and where are we
going to play? - I hope to generate backing throughout the reading to carry the play into
production, hopefully in the fall - it's a stretch… Ed
Sunday, May 3, 2015: I'm going to shut down the advertising campaign for this website
now, and apply the money to targeted local ads for my (hopefully) August staged
reading - thank you, Mystery Audience! - I've never heard from even one of you maybe
30,000 annual visitors to this website, but I trust a few of you are out there, world-wide -
my website will still be up, I just won't be advertising it anywhere, for awhile - my long-
term job ended this past Friday, and although I'll miss the connection with the great
students I was teaching, and the extra money, I'll now have more time to finally get back
to my writing - to make the changes my director, Sylvia Baeza, suggested for "The
Glimmer" the evening of the audition, when not even one actor showed up - also, I hope

to finish "Crest of the Waves", my play about the old sea captain and his grandson, and
finish "Tapestry of a Conquest", my play about the "1066" characters and events - I just
got my tax returns back, and also, my latest check for teaching, and along with my other
income, maybe I can get through the summer by just writing, and also attempt to make
the staged reading for "The Glimmer" happen in August - it just takes money; I can
make it happen - I don't think I'll do another audition, again - and I'm not sure why I'm
doing a staged reading - maybe to see things "jell", and check out potential actors, as
well as gauge the play's impact on an audience - it's really all about production, and
since a reading is costly, on a lesser basis, maybe I should just push for a full-blown
production of the play, and save the time and the money used up for a reading - I don't
know, we'll see where the summer leads... anyway, thanks for coming to my website,
and checking out my stuff! - I'll still be here, just without the ads - I'll let you know what
I'm doing, and post my progress with both my plays and the reading and/or a production
of "The Glimmer"… Ed
Monday, May 11, 2015: I've erased, but saved, all the previous diary entries - I started
writing, again, last Wednesday, now that my full-time job is over - I've been making the
changes that Sylvia, the director wanted me to make - I'll print out a draft today, and
take a look at it - I'll contact her this morning to see how her job interviews went - it may
determine when I make another run at staging a reading of "The Glimmer" this summer
- this time successfully - also, I have to contact The Flight Deck theater in Oakland to
see if the August 15 date is still open - I'm going to update this website, so it's more
effective - I've got to begin a push for a reading and eventual production of the full-
length "The Glimmer" this year - my other options for success as a writer - even minor
success - are slim, maybe - I've got to keep at it, and not get discouraged… Ed
Wednesday, May 13, 2015: I've uploaded the latest version of the full-length "The
Glimmer" script, with the changes I've made as per the director's comments -
my director being Sylvia Baeza - among the changes, she wanted me to move
sequences from one act to another, to make one of the characters pregnant - okay… -
and to give it a new ending - I made these changes, sent it to her, and am waiting to
hear back from her - you can read an excerpt of the latest draft of "The Glimmer" below
- a full-read will cost 99 cents - I read through he latest issue of "The Dramatist" - I am a
member of The Dramatist's Guild - and some of it explored other ways to support a
playwriting "habit" - writing for TV, screen, children's shows, circuses, video games, etc.
- all of which sound time-consuming, too collaborative in the writing process, and
somewhat demeaning - however financially remunerative, it's not for me, and I am going
to continue writing my own plays - as I have done for decades - and continue trying to
get them produced - but I would like to make extra income to make productions
possible, thus the 99 cents.. click on "The Glimmer" link below, and read an excerpt of
the play… Ed
Thursday, May 21, 2015: Been working on “Crest of the Waves”, my play-in-progress
about an old sea captain, his grandson, and his grandson’s African-American girlfriend -
I already have a complete draft of this play, but it seemed too much an homage to my
family history - it’s good I’ve been away from it for awhile, while I was working - maybe I

have a different perspective on it, now - at any rate, I made a copy of it, and am now
working on that copy - I eliminated a minor character at the start, and am trying to
tighten up the plot and cut out the unnecessary, while at the same time keeping
characters for “color”, even if they don’t advance the plot - I’m trying to touch that old
time Florida feeling, from my youth - when doors were always unlocked, and I was in
tune with the tide going in and out, the hot mugginess of it, the smell of decomposing
plant matter, the rains every afternoon in the summer, the warm Gulf, the warm nights,
the slow pace of life - its eternal quality.. I’m also trying to stretch myself, change my
writing style, while still retaining my writing roots in Beckett (‘Endgame’) and some of the
early East European playwrights - write sparingly, cut down on excess verbiage, get to
the point, get to the plot - I see I started a file for this full-length play as a one-act last
fall, and opened it up yesterday - I guess I was going to condense the entire play into 30
minutes - all I found was the title “Crest of the Waves - A One-act Play” - nothing more -
I must have figured I couldn’t do it - I’m trying to create archetypal figures, classic
characters that will last - and I’m not even sure I know what archetypal means - I‘ll have
to look it up - I figure I can go anywhere with this draft - change it, shorten it, explore it,
whatever - if I don’t like what I’ve done, I can just save it, and move on, or revert back to
the “already completed” original draft, again - I went over the first act yesterday and
today - tomorrow, I’ll start working on the second act - must close for now, one of the
new kittens is playing around next to the laptop, and starting to distract me.. oh, and
also, to create a mood for the writing on this play, I play “Sounds of an old wooden
sailing ship” in the background - waves washing against a hull, rigging creaking, watch
bell dinging… Ed
Monday, June 1, 2015: I created a tribute to Michael Lange, a very talented artist who
recently passed away, and had it as my home page on this website for a couple of
weeks - it’s time to get back to work - I started working on “Crest of the Waves”, my play
about an old sea captain and his grandson - I copied what I had previously written,
eliminated a character at the beginning of the play, and otherwise edited the language
some, and tried to get a handle on it - I’m still not satisfied with it, and will copy the copy,
and then try to pare the play down to its essential dramatic essences - whatever that
means - I will post the copy as a “Work in Progress” today… Ed
Thursday, June 11, 2015: I switched off from “Crest of the Waves” after I took out its
subplot, smoothed the dialogue, and then put back the subplot after I decided I liked it -
then, bereft of further ideas on that play, I went and worked on another work-in-
progress, “Tapestry of a Conquest”, my play about 1066 and all that - decided I kind of
liked it, smoothed out some things - next day heard a short piece on the composer
Wagner and the opening to ‘Tristan und Isolde’, liked the uncertainty and foreboding
sound of it, and holding that thought, went back and worked on “Tapestry” with an eye
toward making the narrator, Bishop Odo in a dungeon cell, more manic and
schizophrenic - didn’t exactly work, but I tried - also, I was trying to decide who the play
was about - decided it was Earl Harold, and since the last scene was about Odo,
decided to cut the scene, and incorporate its dialogue into Odo’s schizo character - but
then decided I like the scene, and left it as is - otherwise, just made some of ‘Tapestry’s’
dialogue in the present tense rather than the past tense, when describing offstage

battles - and uploaded the latest draft of ‘Tapestry to this website, after converting it to
a .pdf - today, I went and looked at the last act of ‘The Glimmer’, which I’ve been having
problems with - decided it sounded banal, and no flashes of inspiration - only removed a
comma.. well, here we are... Ed
Tuesday, October 13, 2015: Well, I’m back after four months - and after canceling two
staged readings this year, and having a 6-week computer melt-down this summer, I
decided the thing to do was get back to my writing - for one thing, it doesn’t cost me
anything - instead of finishing work on two unfinished plays, I decided I needed to work
on something new - so I started work on a sequel to ‘Lake Gothic’, my play about the
night in 1816 when Romantic writers Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and Doctor
Polidari met in Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to write ghost stories one rainy evening,
resulting in the beginnings of ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Vampyre’, an early vampire novel - all
the while combatting their dopplegangers and an ancient Persian mystic. I had already
decided to set the play in the subterranean of the Netherworld, the abode of Ostanes,
the Persian mystic who keeps coming back to life after multiple deaths - I call the play
‘Lake Brimstone’ - early in its writing, I felt I could accomplish anything I wanted with my
writing - unfortunately resulting in a lot of facile tripe I had to cut, as well as a dearth of
depths of characters (still true) - however, the writing has been flowing easily - I guess
the Muses (or, the Muse), from whom I believe some of writing springs, are still in touch
with me - I have about 50 pages, mostly written while seeking a plot line - I’m getting
closer, making progress - next, I have to get into my character’s heads, and also include
some of my life observations - since the theme of the play is loosely “fate”, and the
question whether fate can be changed, I better focus on what I believe in the matter -
this is where my degree in Philosophy (useless, otherwise, although it did get me my
Teaching Credential) should come in handy - writing ‘Lake Brimstone’ has also given me
the opportunity to read about the Greek gods, since I have introduced six new
characters in this sequel: Hermes, the god of many things, including acting as a guide to
the Underworld, a trickster, and also a mediator, and two gods of the Underworld,
Thantaclos, the god of death, and Hypnos, the god of sleep - I portray them as kind of
the Abbot and Costello of gods - that’s just the way they came out - also, I got to find out
a little about the Three Fates, Clothis, Lachesis, and Apropos - how they looked through
the ages, what props they carried, how they operated, and that they sang in chorus like
Sirens - so I got to write a short song they sing upon their first entrance - short, so I
don’t mess it up too much - also, I played around a bit with the set - a long cavern with
stairs swooping down from our mortal world to The Netherworld, and continuing on into
Tartarus, the underworld where Thantaclos and Hypnos hang out, along with
Hephaestus, the god of fire - he’s the god who made all the armor for the gods, as well
as their thrones in Mount Olympus, on his forge - he was the god of blacksmithing - he
also made the stairs and the thrones in my play, and so I had them made out of metal -
I’m also considering whether to stage the play on an island in the middle of bubbling
Lake Brimstone - finally, three things: one, I get to read some of the ancient Greek
myths concerning the gods; two, my dopplegangers are merely dumb mimics of their
mortals, and so far have little personality - I have yet to get a “hook” on how to present
their characters; and three, I got to explore water clocks , which were the main method
of keeping track of time for two thousand years - I put one between the two metal

thrones, a large water clock, constantly dripping into a pool, marking not only the
passage of time, but marking fates that end, as new ones begin - in all, this has been a
fun play to write, if a lot of work and editing - I think I’m on my seventh draft - I have
included this latest draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ below on this website, and yes, it is
copyrighted - check it out, and make any comments about it either in the “Comment”
section of this website, or through e-mailing me at edballou@icloud.com - I’ll get back to
you - en avant - onward! - Ed
Tuesday, October 20, 2015: I have been working on ‘Lake Brimstone’ for three months -
Arthur Miler wrote ‘Death of a Salesman’ in six weeks - he knew his plot, and he even
broke the realistic theatrical form of the time, and had Willy Loman spin his story out of
his head over 24 hours - I’m still struggling with my plot - I once joked to myself, the way
I write a play is to throw some characters and dialogue into a creative stew, and then
look down in it, to see if I can discern a plot.. I feel this play is so far trite - it’s like I have
been writing an eggshell, and need to crack the egg to get inside it - I re-read some
information about the god Hermes, who is in the play - and he was a bigger character in
myth than I thought - so, I started expanding his role in the play - perhaps I can use him
as the beak who breaks the eggshell (I don’t know where I get these metaphors).. I’m
going to start up my GoogleAdWords campaign, again - in the U.S. for starters - that
way, I’ll have a few dozen people come to my website and (hopefully) read my plays,
instead of the current single digit daily numbers of visitors I get now, without advertising
- I don’t know what I’m going to do, just that I won’t charge money for downloads (that
never worked) - instead, I’m trying to get my writing out there by word of mouth - I don’t
know what else to do, I’ve tried everything to make a dollar with my writing - nothing
works, and I have no money to do even a reading of one of my plays, let alone mount a
production - what I can do, is keep writing... why don’t you check out the latest draft of
‘Lake Brimstone’ (about 50 pages), below… Ed
Sunday, October 25, 2015: I wrote a new scene for ‘Lake Brimstone’, between Percy
and Mary, as to whether or not she was willing to give her up life and live down in the
Netherworld with Ostanes, in order to save Percy’s life, that he might be able to raise
their son - I also worked on the ending some, and did some editing, as always, and
moved an old scene to a new location - I am next going to work on the doppleganger
characters - imperfect dead copies of their mortal selves up in life - they are currently
too monosyllabic in their language - I want them to be more interesting - not just Percy’s
Doppleganger and Byron’s Doppleganger - they should have characteristics and
language mannerisms of Percy Shelly and Lord Byron - but also of the regular
dopplegangers in ‘Lake Gothic’- I had this thought: if everyone’s doppleganger is down
in the Netherworld, then also there must be the dopplegangers of famous people who
have died - I could have Ostanes, King of the Netherworld, use them as his lieutenants -
so, I made a short list of people who everybody recognizes as the most famous people
of history - before 1816, the time of the play - Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great,
Michelangelo, Galileo, Shakespeare, Napoleon - settling at the outset on Caesar,
Galileo, and Napoleon - I didn’t want to disrespect Shakespeare, The Man - this
morning I researched Napoleon, his life and character, his personality, with an eye to
creating Napoleon the Doppleganger - for any of these characters, I have to “channel”

their persons through my Muse, get a feel for them, their “voice”, so I can write them - I
have even been exploring the idea of a doppleganger revolt, led by the Napoleon the
Doppleganger - I guess I’m feeling him as a short Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski,
but smarter - we’ll see where this goes - stay tuned! - Ed
Sunday, November 1, 2015: I wrote 4 short scenes with the “historic” dopplegangers - I
chose Napeoleon, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci instead of Galileo (what can you
see with a telescope that’s underground in the Netherworld?), and even wrote a scene
with Shakespeare (though I said I would not..) - two of these scenes I inserted into the
middle of Draft 13 to see how they would look - I decided the scenes were just shallow
caricatures of the famous persons and too comic, so I removed them from the current
Draft 14 - I’ll post the scenes separately another day - so, no famous dopplegangers -
also, I changed Mary’s mother (Mother’s Doppleganger is the character’s name) to a
character more like Mary Shelley’s real mother, the early feminist Mary Wollstonecroft -
at least, I’m moving in that direction - in this case, I had already researched her life - I’m
also going to take a look at whether or not I really need the Lord Byron character or the
Claire character - they were a sub-plot from the first ‘Lake‘ play, ‘Lake Gothic’, where
Claire is carrying Byron’s unborn child and has chased him to Villa Diodati on Lake
Geneva to continue their fling, much to his annoyance - either I develop this subplot in
‘Lake Brimstone’, or the two characters may have to go - anyway, off I go... Ed
Friday, November 6, 2015: I haven’t done any writing for a week - I was reaching an
impasse on my current work-in-progress, ‘Lake Brimstone’, and I needed a break -
instead, I re-read ‘Lake Gothic’, which is the the play for which I am writing this sequel,
‘Lake Brimstone’, to get a sense of how the characters and their dopplegangers (evil
twins) behaved and talked - in truth, looking for their “voices” again, so I can channel
them, or whatever it is we do when we write - also, I started up my Google ads for my
website, again, and just bought a used copy of Bulfinch’s ‘Mythology’ - part of my
creative problem with ‘Lake Brimstone’ is I want it to be better than, and maybe different
from, ‘Lake Gothic’ - since I am dealing with some new characters in this sequel - Greek
gods and The Three Fates - I delved into the myths of which these gods were a part,
and started thinking about what makes a myth - essentially just a good story with long
“legs” - “mythic”. I want to try and write a modern myth, with ‘Lake Brimstone’. So, I will
be reading some of the myths in which the Greek gods appear in Bulfinch’s ‘Mythology‘
- and then I’ll get back to my writing… Ed
Monday, November 9, 2015: I uploaded a new draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ this morning -
Draft 16 - I tried a new ending - I took some work from a previous draft that I had cut,
and pasted it in place of the ending of Draft 15, cut out a couple of characters, changed
the lead character, and smoothed it all out - so here it is - it may not be the final ending,
but I’m trying things.. Ed
Tuesday, November 10, 2015: Well, that Draft 16 - now Draft 17 - worked a little better
than expected - I edited the body a little, then tweaked the ending a little, and I’m okay
with it, for the minute.. now, the hard work - did I get it right? - is there any meaning to it,
any point in writing it, anything I wanted to say ? - what about the concepts of fate and

mortality? - I still have to work, also, on the dopplegangers, especially Mary’s Mother’s
Doppleganger - more to do.. Ed
Wednesday, November 18, 2015: I haven’t worked on’Lake Brimstone’ for maybe a
week - two reasons, my current work assignment is more intensive, and I needed a
break from the play after I finished this reasonable draft - I needed to step back from the
play - so, I re-read ‘King Oedipus’ for the third time in 4 months for ideas on plot
development (also realized Sophocles can say more in one or two lines than I can say
in an entire play, and this is with my reading a translation - what a mind!) - and I’m
reading about the origins of Greek drama - I’ll also read a few more Greek myths - I did
conceive of a scene where Ostanes is ‘staked’ to the ground, awaiting the cave slugs,
while the two gods of the Underworld, Thantaclos and Hypnos, talk to him about how
they’re going to take over his Netherworld - I’ve yet to write it, but am sure I will - I’m
also still searching for a way to write this play in another (new?) way - I just read this
morning an interview with the author of ‘Slade’, a vampire type novel, and he said he
stumbled across the idea of writing his book using Twitter and its short character count -
it worked for him, but I don’t think I’m going to be confined like that - although he
overcame it as a challenge - and I’m not a Twitter follower, although I have an account..
I’m looking for something else - another aside, the author of ‘Slade’ did use the term
“invisible doppleganger” in his interview, and I have dopplegangers in both ‘Lake
Brimstone’ and my completed play, ‘Lake Gothic” - check them out on this website.. Ed
Monday, November 23, 2015: My temporary job has ended, and I’m able to focus on my
writing, again - I did manage to read Sophocles‘ ‘KIng Oedipus’ again, and also a
paperback version of Bulfinch’s ‘The Age of Fable’, and to delve into some of the
ancient Greek myths... I currently follow a daily blog by a New York producer named
Ken Davenport (‘Rent’, ‘Spring Awakening’, and other plays), and one blog was about
Stephen Sondheim, who was quoted as saying, “With any art form, you’ve got to know
the past to be any good. You have to know what has been done before you.”, to which
Ken Davenport added, “Study the classics, my friends. Before you can break the
structure, you have to master it.” Before I read ‘King Oedipus’, a translation by E.F.
Watling, I read his Introduction to the play, which included some observations on the
development of the ‘chorus’ in ancient Greek tragedies, including his belief that “In the
earliest plays of Aeschylus.. the play is a poem recited or sung by a ‘chorus’ with one or
two ‘characters’ to personify its leading themes; and even with Euripides the innovator,
the Chorus.. is still the unifying and commenting interpreter of the drama.” And then
Bulfinch goes on to say, “For him (Sophocles).. the Chorus is also essential to the play
both in its capacity as actor in the events of the drama, and as ‘presenter‘ of its
dominating theme in lyric terms..” So, Sophocles developed the idea of the Chorus
playing two essential roles in a play, instead of only one role. I went back a fourth time
to ‘King Oedipus’, this time only focusing on the lines of the Chorus in the context of the
play - first, the Chorus comes on at the opening of the play and sets the scene by
explicating the pestilence that has befallen Thebes because of the well-known myth of a
man who has killed his own father and married his mother, etc., which man turns out to
be Oedipus by the end of the play - and the Chorus was speaking with one voice, in
unison - then, it was like Oedipus was confiding, through asides, to the Chorus as his

buddy, a single person who is also an actor in the play, and therefore immediately
affected by the action - the Chorus switches back and forth between buddy and
commentator, and at the end gives a short speech summarizing what the play means,
and enumerating the universal truths we have just witnessed - I am trying to write a
modern myth with ‘Lake Brimstone’, and realized I’ve never written a play with a Chorus
in it - so, I thought, ‘the dopplegangers’, there’s my Chorus.. so, I will write three more
drafts (at least) of this play, with two caveats: that I’ll have only three dopplegangers as
my chorus (the number I have on stage presently, both due to cost and to having yet
more characters on stage with no lines), and that this will give me a chance to find a
‘voice‘ for the dopplegangers, so far largely lacking.. my next draft: the dopplegangers
as Chorus ‘commenting’ on the action.. the draft after that: the dopplegangers as the
Chorus ‘actor‘ affected by the action, as well as being ‘commentators’, and the third
draft: what seems to me the next logical step in the development of the Chorus; the
Chorus as creator of action, or at least some of the actions - the Chorus as major
character in the play - I’ll have to develop this thought as I go along, and well, here
goes.. stay tuned… Ed
Tuesday, November 24, 2015: I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that I did write a
new draft of the play, and had Ostanes staked by the lake by the two gods of the
Underworld, to heighten his dilemma - meantime, I did just write the first draft of the
dopplegangers as Chorus, for what it is - I’ll have to work on it more, before I post it.. Ed
Monday, November 30, 2015: Well, I smoothed out ‘Lake Brimstone’ in today’s draft -
the dialogue flows smoothly, with no wasted words - but there are big chunks missing:
the Chorus has made little progress beyond their initial embodiment as a Chorus, the
three dopplegangers of Percy, Byron, and Mary’s Mother are somewhat clunky in their
dialogue, and I have yet to develop, in this play, the artistic sensibilities of the four
writers - Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidari - as I was able to do
in the first play, ‘Lake Gothic’ - also, I’ll have to restore, and elaborate on, the
relationship between Byron and Claire, who was Mary’s half-sister.. I’m a little stuck...
Ed
Wednesday, December 2, 2015: Completed another draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ - I kind of

did my “Chorus drafts” out of sequence - first, I wrote a Chorus that was affected by the
action, then, second, I wrote a draft (this one) where the Chorus is also commenting on
the action - then, at the very end of this draft, I had a flash that the Chorus would initiate
the action instead of another character, Mary - they rush the King of their Netherworld,
grab the baby from him, and (spoiler alert!) push him into Lake Brimstone - I’ll work on
this aspect, using the Chorus as a major character who also determines some of the
direction(s) the play takes - stay tuned for the next draft… Ed
Thursday, December 3, 2015: Well, I just posted Draft 21 of ‘Lake Brimstone’ below.. in
the middle of Scene 1, I had the dopplegangers, as Chorus, force the two gods from the
Underworld, Thantaclos and Hypnos, to negotiate a trade with them - immortality in
exchange for loyalty - I am trying to make the Chorus a force to be reckoned with - a

major character who causes action and actions - check it out on this website, below this
diary... Ed
Saturday, December 5, 2015: I made another new draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ this morning
- came out better than I expected - I tried a few things, threw one thing out, kept a
couple of others - more work to be done, but I’m getting closer to nailing down the plot..
Ed
Sunday, December 6, 2015: I need to develop the sub-plots in ‘Lake Brimstone’ - these
are the missing 30 pages I am after to make this play 90 pages (it’s currently 64 pages).
There are two types of sub-plots in this play: one sub-plot is the human relationships the
characters have among, and between, themselves; for example, Percy and Mary
Shelley have a child between them, but are not married - Percy is actually married (if I
remember from my research) to a woman in England, who is carrying their child - later
that year (1816) she will tragically drown herself and the unborn child - then there is
Lord Byron and Claire, who is carrying their child - he doesn’t want the child, ends up
adopting it after a few years of supporting the child and Claire, and gives it to an
orphanage to be raised by nuns, where it tragically dies after a few years from illness
(again, from memory - I did the research for the first play, ‘Lake Gothic‘, a couple of
years ago, and have packed the primary source material away, not expecting to start
work so soon on the sequel, “Lake Brimstone’) - then, there is the relationship between
Byron and Doctor Polidari, who appears (so far) at the end of the play - Polidari is
Byron’s personal physician, and the author of one of the first vampire novels, ‘Vampyre’,
pre-dating Bram Stoker - Polidari and Byron have a falling out, and Polidari later returns
to England, possibly committing suicide a few years later at age 23 (I think), maybe from
an overdose of laudanum, an opiate, after piling up gambling debts - the second
sub-plot is the relationship between 4 out of 5 of these mortal characters as writers -
Byron and Shelley as the great Romantic poets, Mary Shelley beginning to write
Frankenstein at age 18 under Percy’s guidance and possible collaboration, and Polidari
writes the afore-mentioned “Vampyre” - only poor Claire is not part of this artistic circle,
possibly leading to her feeling excluded - you can see there is a lot of work to be done
(by me) on these sub-plots, which should, however, flesh out these mortal characters in
some depth.. more work to be done.. Ed
Thursday, December 10, 2015: I have a new draft posted of ‘Lake Brimstone’ - I
explored the relationship between Byron and Claire; the truth came out that Ostanes
had previously predicted that Percy’s wife Harriet in England would drown herself and
their unborn child later that winter; I got a physical conflict going between Ostanes and
Percy; I added a Time, Setting, and Characters page at the beginning - the second act
and the ending are both too rushed, and I have not yet explored the artistic relationships
among, and between, the various writers - every time I write a new draft, I automatically
edit and “smooth” the dialogue - I notice I am sometimes driven by the idea that I don’t
like to have only one, or a few, words of dialogue “dangling” into a second text line - I try
and edit the words so the line will fit on only one single text line - it’s surprising how if
you really look at a few words, or a clause, you find you don’t really need them or it, or
you could insert one or two words earlier in the line to get the same effect, or to even

make the dialogue stronger - “Cutting lends strength”, said one of those playwriting
manuals I read way back when - the quote is maybe by William Archer, I can’t
remember.. Ed
Sunday, December 13, 2015: I’m stuck - I’m still not happy with the way ‘Lake
Brimstone’ is going - I went back and re-read ‘Lake Gothic’, my play for which ‘Lake
Brimstone’ is the sequel - same characters, different location - instead of the drawing
room of Villa Diodati for ‘Gothic’, ‘Brimstone’ is set in the Netherworld down the cellar
stairs, below the Villa - all the characters in “Gothic’ seem more real, fleshed out more,
with actual artistic personalities - even Ostanes is more believable - I don’t know, maybe
I’m losing my talent, or the Muse(s) no longer speaks to/through me, at least not clearly
and vibrantly - or maybe I’m too constrained by my early study of Beckett’s ‘Endgame’,
as well as the East European playwrights, from which I learned “less is more” - keep the
dialogue spare and the plot to the point.. I saw the live-stream of Ken Davenport’s
“Daddy Long Legs” last Thursday night, and although it isn’t the type of play I would
write, it did seem unfettered and theatrical, unlike my current draft of ‘Lake Brimstone‘ -
I don’t know, maybe I’ll get away from ‘Brimstone‘ for a while, work on something else
and come back to it, we’ll see... meantime, I went to the website of ‘Theatre in the Raw’
in Vancouver, Canada, to download the entry requirements for their annual one-act
playwriting contest, deadline Dec.31 - I came in second in 2007 for my one-act ‘Nuclear
Fall-in’ - a comedy about a family living too close to a nuclear power plant and they have
mutated - the play was produced (along with the other two winning one-acts)10 times on
a mini-tour of British Columbia, including once in Vancouver, and I actually got a check
for the second place cash prize and royalties - about $270 - made me feel good,
although I had no money to fly up and stay and see any of the performances - this time
I’m submitting my play ‘Last Teller’, about the last of the Neanderthals living in a cave in
Gibraltar, and what happened to the last storyteller of their species - I’ll put the play up
on this website today.. Ed
Saturday, December 19, 2015: I felt I had gotten too close to ‘Lake Brimstone’, “couldn’t
see the forest for the trees”, and felt I needed to get away from it for awhile before I get
back to work on it - so I switched over to a play I’ve been trying to finish, ‘Crest of the
Waves’, a play about an old retired sea captain and his grandson, set in Florida on a
beach island in 1970 - far away from the world of ‘Brimstone’, set in the Netherworld
underneath a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816 - so, I came up with a
reasonable draft of ‘Crest’ over the last few days, and have included the draft below for
your perusal.. Ed
Sunday, December 20, 2015: Didn’t feel it was time yet to go back to work on ‘Lake
Brimstone’ - so I left ‘Crest of the Waves’ in 1970 Florida, and went back in time to 1066
in England, to my work-in-progress ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’, about the men and events
leading up to the Battle of Hastings - smoothed it out bit - see that I tried a new ending,
consolidating two scenes at the end - didn’t quite work, and the play’s way too short - I’ll
see what I can do.. scroll down the website to find ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’, and check
out what I’ve written so far... Ed

Tuesday, December 22, 2015: I worked a little on ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’ - did not
upload the revisions, yet - I copied the last scene from a previous draft, and tagged it
onto the end of the latest draft - then I compared the two endings, which have similar
material - the old scene set at Dover Castle - the new scene set in Odo’s dungeon cell,
and he playing the scene as if mad, and imagining himself at Dover - we’ll see.. I put a
new comment section near the top of the website, but after two days no one has
commented - I average 80 visits a day to this website, and about 100 reads of my plays,
from all over the world - Pakistan, Norway, Viet Nam, Russia, the Philippines, Thailand,
Mongolia, the USA, etc. - but no one has a comment? - I would like to bring you visitors
together in a loose community, thus the comment section - although you probably won’t
ever see any productions of my plays, due to the distance, I would like to live stream
any productions I manage to produce for free (initially) to this website, and you could
view my plays from anywhere you are in this wide world - this is my thought - plays
really are meant to be seen, rather than read.. Ed
Wednesday, December 23, 2015: I worked on ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’, again - in the

middle of the night, I thought to frame all the events and characters leading up to the
Battle of Hastings and its aftermath, within the context of two brothers in conflict -
Bishop Odo and Duke William of Normandy - and so, I re-wrote the ending, accordingly
- there is also in the play the conflict between two other brothers, Earls Harold and
Tostig of England - I’ll go through the play from start to finish, and see if I can sharpen
these conflicts - at least, it’s an new approach for me - I still have not posted this latest
draft of ‘Tapestry’ - perhaps tomorrow... Ed
Thursday, December 24, 2015: I accomplished a little - sharpened the very last line, and
put titles to all the characters names - quite tedious - a director I’ve worked with, Sylvia
Baeza, suggested I do this after she read an earlier draft - I guess I was familiar with the
characters, so felt first names were all that was required - I can see that other people
could get their positions mixed up, although I tried to make them obvious from the
dialogue - as tomorrow is Christmas, I probably won’t work on the play until Friday - I’ll
go through it and sharpen the two brother conflicts, if needed, and see what else I can
do with it - it’s only 60 pages long - 1066 and all that, in only an hour! - I must be
missing something - also, I’ll add page numbers.. Ed
Saturday, December 26, 2015: I put page numbers on the latest draft, and posted it just
now, after smoothing and sharpening it - I’m coming closer to a decent ending - perhaps
these 57 pages are all I have to say about “1066” - but I found two of my original source
materials - first, a 20-foot copy of the scroll of The Bayeux Tapestry, given to me by
Armand Boulet, a French teacher I used to work with, may he Rest In Peace - he had
seen the original Tapestry in France, and it was the gift of his copy that inspired me to
write this play - second, a book I bought titled “The Normans” - I will re-visit both
sources - specifically, is there more to the story I should tell? - and, is there more to
explore in the relationship between William and brother Odo? - Ed
Tuesday, December 29, 2015: I haven’t gone back to writing on ‘Tapestry of a

Conquest, yet, let alone go back to work on ‘Lake Brimstone’ - instead I have been

perusing some of the books I read for the original research for ‘Tapestry’ - I just finished
dipping again into ‘The Conquest of England’ by Eric Linklater, and found his
perspective that Bishop Odo was actually quite a noble character, very supportive of his
brother William, and willing to lead military forays into North England after the Conquest
to suppress rebellion - Eric’s view is that William the Conqueror, after he had conquered
and started governing and aging, began to make hasty and unwise decisions, as maybe
he felt time was running out to accomplish his remaining goals - and that this is why he
had his brother Odo hastily imprisoned, after believing Odo was angling after the Pope’s
job.. today, I’ll dip back into ‘1066: The Year of the Three Battles’ by Frank McLynn, and
review his take on Odo and William - I’m trying to frame my play in terms of the
relationship between these two brothers, as well as develop a sub-plot about the
relationship between Earl Harold of England and his brother, Earl Tostig.. I read a
review this morning of Herman Wouk’s memoir at age 100: ‘Sailor and Fiddler’ - in it ,he
states writing literature is like a crap game (”a mug’s game”) because it’s like rolling dice
as to whether you’ll have any success, or not - well, I’m still rolling the dice after 45
years of playwriting, and I still believe I’m a significant playwright with something to say,
even if I will never be among the pantheon of great playwrights.. I’m going to post these
“blogs” at the beginning of the website, like now, and then, as I post each new “blog”, I’ll
take down each old one, and tag it onto the end of all the other “blogs”, which are
contained in ‘My 2015 Writing Diary’, a little further down the website - also, I don’t think
my new comment section is working out, as if there are any comments, I can’t read
them without an RSS reader, although I have one on this laptop, and I downloaded a
free one, also - I just can’t read any comments, if there are any to read - so, I’ll take out
the new ‘Comment’ section, and rely on the old “Comment‘ section that came with this
‘Squarespace” website, which is on the Menu bar - if you did leave me a comment
previously, and I delete it in this process, please re-post your comment to me in the
‘Comment‘ section, or send it to my e-mail at edballou@icloud.com - I’ll reply! - thanks,
and talk to you later.. Ed
Thursday, December 31, 2015: Last entry for my writing diary for 2016 - I shall start a
new writing diary for 2016 - I finished the re-visiting of my ‘Tapestry’ research
concerning Bishop Odo of Bayeux and his half-brother, William the Conqueror - I now
have a more nuanced vision of Odo as a warrior prelate, supporter of the arts and
scholarships, builder of a great cathedral at Bayeux and Norman castles in England -
perhaps he was wrongly and hastily imprisoned by William as more a matter of William’s
ego than anything done wrong by Odo, even if he did perhaps aspire to be Pope - I will
look again at a late scene I cut, where William visits Odo at the Norman castle he built
at Dover - I wrote it was there they had their falling out, and then the last scene is Odo
imprisoned in his own dungeon at Bayeux Cathedral - actually, I just read that he was
imprisoned in the tower of the cathedral (I presume) at Rouen, which church bells
awakened a dying William on the day of his death - he inquired of the sound, they told
him it was the bells calling the people to Mass, he uttered some words pledging himself
to Jesus Christ, and died - it can be sure that Odo heard these bells at that exact same
time, as he was possibly imprisoned in the tower that held those bells - also, I already
knew William reluctantly pardoned Odo on his death bed, not at Odo’s cell where I have
William then die - artistic license - it’s my play! - however, I will reconsider the whole

ending, before I declare (to myself) the play done.. New Year’s Resolutions, per my
writing: to finish shortly two full-length plays I have been working on, to wit, ‘Tapestry of
a Conquest‘ and ‘Crest of the Waves‘ - and maybe even ‘Lake Brimstone’, with which I
shall wrestle, upon the completion of these other two plays - could be a productive year
for my writing - I hope the coming year is also productive for all you out there... Ed Ps -
I may add to this post before midnight...
Monday, January 4, 2016: I just posted a new draft of ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’ - I added
back in, at the end, the scene at Dover Castle in England between Duke William and
Bishop Odo, who was also Earl of Kent - also, since Odo was reluctantly pardoned and
freed by Duke William on the Duke’s deathbed, due to pleas by their brother, Count
Robert of Mortain, I introduced Count Robert into a middle scene to lend him credibility -
and I sharpened the moral of the story: it’s really about four nobles fighting for the
English crown, when Edward dies - Duke William, Earl Harold, Earl Tostig, and KIng
Harald Hardrada - each fighting for the power the small gold crown represented, when
perhaps they should have been content with the great power each already wielded..
there was only one winner, and after 20 years even he dies a somewhat comic, if tragic,
death.. and the crown continues on, undaunted, uncaring, sitting on maybe 30 or 40
different heads, over the next thousand years… Ed
Sunday, January 10, 2016: I decided since the play ‘Crest of the Waves’ is about the life
of the old sea captain, Cap, I should have his death not be told in the second person by
Teddy, as currently written - but shown in the first person, as those who loved him
gather around Cap at his passing - I wrote that scene over the past two days, and have
replaced the old scene with the new, in this latest version of ‘The Crest of the Waves’ I
have just posted.. Ed
Monday, January 11, 2016: I decided if I was to have Cap’s passing in ‘Crest of the
Waves’ be onstage, then I would write the passing of Mrs. Tilson also as occurring
onstage, rather than offstage - so I did - it’s about two thirds through the play, in this new
draft I just posted moments ago.. Ed
Sunday, January 17, 2016: I worked on my play, ‘The Glimmer’, just now - I cleaned it
up a little, and most importantly, combined some elements of two different old endings
into one new ending that I think I like - I just uploaded the new version of ‘The Glimmer’
- check it out below.. Ed
Monday, February 1, 2016: I’m back, after a week’s hiatus - I’ve been working on ‘Lake
Brimstone’ this past week - made a fair number of changes, tried to get a voice for
Mother The Doppleganger - tried a new ending - cleaned up the formatting, and now it’s
time to get away from it for awhile - “can’t see the forest for the trees” - I’m going to go
and take a look at my plays, ‘Crest of the Waves’, and then ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’ -
see if I can make any progress on them - then come back to ‘Lake Brimstone’ with fresh
eyes - I hope.. Ed

Saturday, February 6, 2016: I just completed a new draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ - I’m
starting to weave in a shaking of religious beliefs due to the passing of a beloved one -
we’ll see if it works - I have also decided I will try once again to stage a reading of “The
Glimmer’, have it live-streamed to this website, and to try another RocketHub campaign
to raise money for a production of ‘The Glimmer’ this year - a big push - I’ve got make
this happen... Ed
Saturday, February 13, 2016: I just uploaded my latest draft - Draft 27 - of ‘Lake
Brimstone’ - I believe I have finally crafted a stable platform upon which to take this play
on to the next levels - one thing I did in this new draft was to move some scenes around
in the first act, so that the time-flow made more sense - the next things I am going to do
is write a new scene where some of the dopplegangers try to sneak up the stairs to life,
only to encounter King Ostanes at the top, coming down from a surreptitious visit of his
own to life, and merge the three onstage dopplegangers more with the Chorus - make
that more clear - I’m thinking of having the offstage, unseen, population of
dopplegangers represented by the already sketchily written dopplegangers of Percy and
Byron - and add the doppleganger of Polidari, who appears in the prequel, ‘Lake Gothic’
- I bought an anthology of poetry by Harold Bloom, ‘The Best Poems of the English
Language’, to research the poems of Byron, Shelley, and even Keats - at one time I was
going to include his character in the story line - I read their poetry to try and get a better
voice for their characters - but reading a few poems by great poets with large bodies of
work is at best a snapshot - the best I can do, unless I wanted to become a professor
specializing in my life’s study of even one of the poets - as I worked at the school this
week, and didn’t bring my laptop to work on my play the first day, I decided to delve into
some of the other poets in the anthology, with which I was only familiar by name and
reputation - so I delved into the poetry of about 20 poets - some I liked and some I didn’t
much - but two things stood out: I read T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland‘ for the first time, and
wondered if Bob Dylan had also read it, their writing styles are so similar - and one poet
made a big impression, Walt Whitman - his words leapt off the page at me, as he
shouted out to generations present and past - Whitman seemed to know his voice so
well - my favorite was ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry‘ - I could feel and see the crossing in my
mind, maybe because my mother’s family were sailors, and also because I was born in
New York City - what a writer Walt Whitman is! - must close, will start work on “Lake
Brimstone‘ again, later today or tomorrow.. Ed
Monday, February 15, 2016: I worked on the scene where the dopplegangers attempt to
sneak up to the surface, to life - but are blocked by Ostanes - I then placed the scene in
the right place (I hope) in the play - check it out.. Ed
Saturday, February 20, 2016: I felt I was getting too close to ‘Lake Brimstone’, after
adding some new material, and sort of meandering and losing my way - I decided to get
away from it, and work on other things - I just spent a couple of days working on ‘Crest
of the Waves’ - mostly worked on the Second Act and the ending, when Cap passes -
it’s okay for now, and now I need to get away from ‘Crest’, and go look at ‘Tapestry of a
Conquest’, maybe work on it - then perhaps go back to ‘Lake Brimstone’, if not ‘Crest’,
again - at some point I’ll consider one of them finished, and declare it - although there

could always be changes made in the script during any possible production.. scroll
down the website until you see a picture of a sailing ship, then check out what I’ve done
with ‘Crest of the Waves’… Ed
Sunday, February 21, 2016: I have been working on ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’ this
morning - last night, I thought through the play’s scenes - I originally have the play, after
Bishop Odo’s introduction from his cell, open with the death of King Edward, the
pretenders to the throne circled around his deathbed - then I went back in time in scenic
flashbacks, including two with a living King Edward - and midway through the play the
time sequence becomes linear, again - so, I thought: what if I take Scene 1 and make it
Scene 5, so that the play is temporally all linear? - so, I did that - check out the latest
draft of ‘Tapestry’ by scrolling down to a scene from the original Bayeux Tapestry, of
Harold affirming his pledge of support for Duke William’s ascension to the throne by
swearing on (what turns out to be) the relics of Saint Stephen.. Ed
Saturday, February 27, 2016: I think I am finished with ‘Tapestry of a Conquest”, and
have uploaded what I believe is the final version of the play, unless it gets produced,
and I have to make changes - it is still only 57 pages long in telling the big story of the
Norman conquest and all that led up to it - I felt it should be around 90 pages, but when
I considered writing an extra scene, where Duke William is crowned KIng of England at
Westminster, and the Norman guard outside hear the cheering of acclaim by the
congregation inside, they think it is a Saxon rebellion, and set fires to all the houses
surrounding the church, causing the congregation inside to rush out in panic - leaving
only Duke William and Bishops Odo, Stigand and Aldred of York (who actually did the
royal anointing of William) - Duke William started “violently trembling” as he thought the
conflagration outside was God showing his disapproval of the Norman duke’s English
coronation - I liked this scene, with the flames of the fires silhouetting the stained glass
images on the windows and the diminished party trying to complete the coronation - but
then I would have to introduce the new character of Bishop Aldred, and it wouldn’t
further the characterization of Bishop Odo, as there is little historical evidence of his role
in the proceedings - so I decided not to write the scene - I did move the opening Scene
1 back to become the new Scene 5, to help the linear flow of the play, but to do this I
had to bend history by having Earl Tostig’s rebellion begin after the fact of King
Edward’s passing, not before - but “the play’s the thing”, so I left in that historical
inaccuracy - on to other plays! - specifically ‘Crest of the Waves’, set in Florida in 1970,
about an old sea captain and his grandson - I’ll push to finish it next, and shortly.. Ed
PS - Scroll down the website to the picture of Earl Harold swearing his support of Duke
William’s right to the English throne, in order to view this last draft... Ed
Friday, March 4, 2016: I just posted the “final, final” draft of ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’ -
basically I just cleaned up a few things and made sure events and references were
reconciled to each other - I’ve come to the conclusion that you are never really done
with a play - every time I look at one of my plays - even finished plays - I can always
see more things I want to change - I think that’s because I am always changing as a
writer - just as Heraclitus said, “You can’t step in the same river twice..” (I have a degree
in Philosophy), so are we never the same writer day after day - we progress, we

become new writers each day - which is why you can never really finish a play, just
declare it done, just stop working on it - which is what I have done (tried to do) on
“Tapestry’ - one other thing I did do with the play is smooth out the poetry that Harald
Hardrada, the Norwegian warrior-king recites (his own poetry, historically) in order to
make the poetry easier for actors to recite and audiences to understand - I am not a
poet, I have written maybe 4 haikus and one longer free form poem about the first
meeting between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon peoples, but it seemed this poetic
form of a millennium ago (assuming it was literally translated) was cumbersome - each
poem had two allied but separate short narrations, or stories - the one narration would
tell its story with every other line rhyming, interspersed with every other line of the
second story rhyming - so I just grouped all the rhyming lines of the first story in one
stanza, followed by the rhyming lines of the second story in a second stanza - I think it
makes more sense, even it’s historically not accurate - maybe the original style of
rhyming is extent in modern poetry, but I don’t know enough about poetry to recognize
this - all I know is it’s my play, the rhyming makes better sense to me, and “the play’s
the thing”... Ed
Tuesday, March 8, 2016: I find myself dealing with symbolism in my play, ‘Crest of the
Waves’. I’ve always been suspicious of people saying such and such is really just a symbol of, or for,
this or that. If it’s pointed out to me, I sometimes can see symbolism in a piece of writing, but I don’t read
for it. I also do not consciously place symbols in my own plays. (I see I’m now inadvertently writing in a
new font - what’s the symbolism of that?) But in ‘Crest”, I decided to make a one-time appearance by a
small rock possessed by Cap, the old sea captain, as a symbol of not only the small island he came from,
an extinct volcano sticking out of the sea nicknamed The Rock, but also as a symbol of his way of life - a
generation of old sailors sailing on ships a hundred fifty years ago. So, in my new draft of ‘Crest”, I’ve also
given a small piece of The Rock to Uncle Ralph, Cap’s brother who was another old sailor, and to his son
Jimmy, a chief mate of a sulfur tanker. Cap’s grandson Teddy, who has come down from California to find
his way, sees these rocks as symbols of acceptance by the men from The Rock - ”those who come
before” - people he reveres - and Teddy wants a small piece of The Rock for his own - but the old sailors
tell him he’ll have to earn it by going to sea - and so Jimmy does - for awhile. This is one storyline in this
play - there are two more. A second story line is the budding friendship between Cap and his new tenant,
widow Mrs. Tilson - Cap’s son Jimmy doesn’t like this arrangement, as he lives down the beach with his
mother, Cap’s legal wife - they’re separated - so that is another conflict I have to explore more. The third
story line is the racist sentiments of these old retired sailors in this small beach town, when Rhonda,
Teddy’s black girlfriend from California, unexpectedly follows him down to the deep South in a possible
attempt to rekindle their relationship. This third conflict I’ve explored the best, though I’ll take another look
at a scene I cut toward the end of the play. These are the elements I must work on today in ‘Crest of the
Waves’. As soon as I finish a decent draft, I’ll post it for your perusal in a subsequent posting... Ed
2 hours later on Tuesday, March 8, 2016: I did most of what I planned to do earlier today
- I put back in two scenes: one involving Jimmy and Mrs. Tilson, and the other wrapping
up Teddy and Rhonda’s relationship - what I didn’t get to was the third storyline of Teddy
trying to gain acceptance from his old sailor relatives - I start with an expanded speech
for Teddy about how bad he feels quitting the sea (spoiler alert!), but that’s for next time
- also, now that I added that final scene between Teddy and Rhonda, I have to go back
and re-introduce Roy, a character I had cut, as he now figures in the story line - maybe
I’m going in circles - I had cut these two scenes to make the play more focused and to
edit out any extraneous stuff, but now they’re back in and I’ve just made the play longer
by 10 pages/10 minutes - well, I’ll work on it some more - that’s all for now - a new draft

of ‘Crest of the Waves’ is what I just posted.. just scroll down in the website to the
picture of the sailing ship and click on the title to peruse the new draft - the one newly
re-added scene is toward the end of Act 1, and the other newly re-added scene is at the
end of Act 2.. Ed
Saturday, March 19, 2016: I needed a break from working on ‘Crest of the Waves’, so I
went back to working on ‘Lake Brimstone’ this past week - I completed another draft of it
- among other changes, I worked on the personalities of the three dopplegangers who
comprise the Chorus, had them recite some of the poetry of their mortal twins, Percy
Shelley and Lord Byron - and in Polidari’s case, his doppleganger recites a fragment
from his novel ‘Vampyre’ - I also had these three dopplegangers plot to escape up the
stairs to life - and are thwarted by a surprise appearance by KIng Ostanes - next, I want
to play with having the three dopplegangers fail at reciting their mortal twin’s work in
more humorous or pathetic attempts, as they are imperfect copies of their mortal twins -
scroll down the website to the picture of Lake Brimsione, and click on the link to read
this latest draft.. Ed
Saturday, March 26, 2016: I just uploaded the latest draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’, as of this
morning - mostly, I worked on the beginning and the ending - I had the dopplegangers
recite the poems and literature of their mortal twins in a halting, unsure fashion, as they
are imperfect copies of their mortal twins - and I think I nailed down the ending - next, I
want to work on the interactions of the mortals with each other - have them recite small
pieces of their writings, as well as talk about the act of writing - also I need to develop
Act 2 and make it longer, maybe as long as Act 1... Ed
Saturday, April 2, 2016: I worked on something different this past week - I follow a daily
blog by a guy named Ken Davenport, a producer in New York City, so I can keep up
with theater developments - last week he announced his Fourth Annual 10-minute Play
Contest - all the scripts will be read either by himself, an agent, or another theater
producer from Portland, Oregon - since Ken’s staff already has the script of my
full-length play ‘The Glimmer’, and have not yet read it after 7 months, due to the
volume of submissions they get, I figure this time I’ll actually get my work read by
important people in short order, as the deadline for submissions is April 15, and the
winner will be announced before May 1 - I have written a few one-acts, and one actually
is 10 pages or less, called ‘On The Celebration Of Being Alone” - I have it up on
scribd.com, along with most of my other plays - but the rules said this had to be new
work, so I started work on a play I had been thinking of, about a guy at a bar with his
back to us - we see only his face in the mirror - and he’s talking to the bartender and
customers right and left, but we can neither see or hear them, just his responses to
them, as his life and career are revealed to be slowly coming apart - the character was
based on a friend, and I called the play, ‘Mack’ - but after two days and three pages of
work I decided the play was becoming too close to home and too unflattering to my
friend, so I stopped work on it, and went to Plan B, or Play B - a full-length play I had
been thinking of writing later called “Push The Lever”, about an old 50’s style bar, it’s
characters, and the removal of its safe one night - I thought I could at least condense it
into a 10 page one-act, and that way no matter what happens in the contest, at least I’ll

have gotten some work done on that particular play, when I do write it in full-length form
- so, I wrote it over a few days and 20 hours, pretty much finished it, and am about to
send it in to the contest - the link to it is posted below for your perusal - just scroll down
to the black and white picture of an old bar and the title ‘Push The Lever’.. Ed
Saturday, April 23, 2016: Shakespeare’s 400th birthday - Happy birthday, William! - at
least, generally believed to be his birthday, and definitely known to be the day he
“shuffled off this mortal coil..” I uploaded the last draft of ‘Push The Lever’ this morning -
a few minor changes - this is the draft I entered into the Davenport Ten Minute Play
Contest - which is why I wrote the play in a week - I figured for a $10 entry fee I was
guaranteed to get at least one of my plays read in a matter of weeks, and by one of
three people: a Broadway producer, a Portland, Oregon producer, and a New York
theater agent - one of those people has to read my play, and if I make the cut, I
presume the other two will also have read it - the cut is ten play finalists, which will then
be voted on as to the winner by the readers of Ken Davenport’s daily blog - I would
guess that would be some thousands of people, mostly theater people, of which I am
one - that’s exposure! - of course, being the winner of the $500 first place prize would
be nice, but not necessary - I’m just looking to get my stuff out there - I should know the
outcome by this Tuesday, April 26 - will post it on this website.. also, this morning I
completed the latest draft of ‘Lake Brimstone‘ and uploaded it to this website- I’m getting
pretty close to feeling this play is finished, for better or worse - I can alway make
changes in a workshop, rehearsal, production, etc. - “En avant!” - Tennessee Williams - I
think it means “Forward!” - scroll down to the picture of the molten lake to read ‘Lake
Brimstone”, and scroll down to the black and white picture of the small bar for “Push
The Lever’..
PS - I am also running a crowd-funding campaign on indiegogo.com to try and raise
funds for a staged reading of the full-length ‘The Glimmer” in Oakland, California this
summer - go to indiegogo.com, type ‘The Glimmer Staged Reading’ in the search bar,
and check out the perks, which are free tickets to a fall production, if I can raise the
funds for that - one thing at a time... Ed
Sunday, May 8, 2016: I didn’t win the Davenport Ten Minute Play Contest - I didn’t even
make the cut to the final ten plays - Ken Davenport’s blog had a link to all 10 plays - I
read some, skimmed others - three that I noticed were: a 2 and 1/2 page(!) play about a
Latina who imagines herself as Wonder Woman, a play about a guy who’s trying to
convince his neighbor to help him stuff a body into the neighbor’s trash can (too violent
for me), and a play about two performing walruses who start talking to each other when
their trainer’s not around - then, I went back and read my own ten-minute play I had
entered into the contest, ‘Push The Lever’ - you can find it below on this website, scroll
down to the black and white picture of a bar - and of course, I thought it was better than
all the other ten plays - ‘Jolly Wolly”, about the walruses, was the winner - I went and
tried to read it, again - read about half; it just didn’t interest me - so there you go -
maybe it’s a case of sour grapes on my part - then again, maybe not.. so, I turned my
focus to my crowd-funding effort on indiegogo.com for an August staged reading of my
full-length ‘The Glimmer‘ (‘The Glimmer Staged Reading’ on the search bar) - got $75 in
donations from two of my friends - audience views are stuck at 44 - I tried to make

promo business cards through the Staples website, which kept hanging up - finally went
down to Staples twice - the first time couldn’t get my username/password to work on
their computer - second time went down with my designs saved to a flash drive - we
couldn’t open it - they told me it had to be a jpeg file - yesterday I went to change the
format of the file on my computer, but the AT&T internet connection was down for the
day for the whole neighborhood - today, I’m thinking, forget it, let the fund time elapse in
12 days - asking people for money is like saying: “I don’t have money - so, can you give
me some of your money, so I can do my trip?” - it’s not me, to beg - if I have my own
money, I’ll do my thing, I know how to do it, have done it - today, I just finished another
draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’, after not writing for a week - not many changes, so I must be
getting close to the finish - anyway, I just uploaded it to Scribd.com - you can find a link
to the script below, at the picture of the burning lake - my writing is going okay - it’s the
production part that is getting me discouraged.. Ed
Thursday, May 12, 2016: Well, this may be it - my Squarespace website is set to
automatically renew tomorrow, and I haven’t got the money to renew it until June 1 - I’ll
contact them and see if I can make a deal, otherwise this website I’ve posted for 2 or 3
years will disappear - fortunately, everything posted to the website (I think) is also
posted on my account at scribd.com, an Internet library based in San Francisco -
problem is, whenever I go there as a reader - just to test it out - it’s hard to find my stuff -
my plays and diaries - but logging in to my scribd. site is no problem for me - anyway, I
just gathered all my 2016 postings about my writing process and travails into one file
called ‘My Writing Diary 2016’, and am about to post it to scribd.com - I see my
previously posted ‘My Writing Diary 2015’ has garnered 7200 views, or maybe readings,
in just the past 5 months it has been posted on scribd.com - I am also going to post my
doppleganger out-takes for my Gothic play, ‘Lake Brimstone’, when I wrote 4 short
scenes for the dopplegangers of 4 famous people - Shakespeare, Michelangelo,
Napoleon, and I forget the other dude, maybe Caesar - decided I didn’t like them in the
play, and so cut them out - anyway, I’ll gather them together in another file, call it
‘Doppleganger Out-takes’, and post it today on scribd.com - other than that, I’ve done
no writing since Monday, am about out of money and stressed by my finances, I didn’t
make the cut in the Davenport Ten Minute Play Contest, and my indiegogo.com
crowd-funding effort is going nowhere and will die a quiet death on May 20 - I guess this
means there will be no staged reading of the full-length ‘The Glimmer’ this summer - oh
well, I’ll survive and continue writing, I always do - further postings about my writing will
be uploaded to my account at scribd.com, as revisions to ‘My Writing 2016’, as this
website will probably no longer be extent - but, we’ll see - thanks for reading this, check
out my plays on scribd.com (a couple of my one-acts are not posted there, yet), and I’ll
catch you on the flip side.. Ed
Saturday, May 14, 2016: Looks like I can keep this website up for 14 more days while I
figure out how to pay the renewal fee - meantime, I took all my 2016 Writing Diary
entries for my playwriting, and combined them with my 2015 Writing Diary entries to
make one 22 page document. in chronological order by entry, earliest to latest, under
the title ‘What the hell with the hat?’, a line from a recent 10 page play I wrote last
month - the play is on this site with a black and white picture of an old 50’s bar, and is

called ‘Push The Lever’ - this was the play I entered into the Davenport Ten Minute Play
Contest and didn’t make the cut - you can read about my playwriting process and
production attempts by pushing the link for “What the hell with the hat?’, which is by the
picture of the old black 1938 Simplex typewriter my dad used in college at Colgate - I
started writing on in it 1970, using only one finger - wrote my first play on it, a one-act
called ‘The Flophouse’, based on my family living in my mother’s small duplex, on a
frontage road to the freeway in East Palo Alto - it was produced later that summer in
Berkeley at the Westminster House on Bancroft at College, which is now a bar/
restaurant called ‘The Freedom House’ - I still have a cast recording of the play on an
old-fashioned reel of tape - I graduated to using two fingers to type on the old Simplex,
which I still own - then I bought a 1970 Olympia portable typewriter, which typed in script
- then on to an old 1984 Apple IIe computer, to a 1990 Powerbook laptop, the 2000
IBook laptop, then a 2004 Apple desktop computer (these last 4 purchase dates are
approximations), and now I work on this 2010 Apple MacBook laptop - I’m up to using 4
fingers, now - I’ll try to edit and post another draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ tomorrow
morning.. Ed
Sunday, May 15, 2016: I started writing decades ago, while I was getting my degree in
Philosophy - I was reading about Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy and was amused that he
had written a treatise called ‘The benefits of drinking tar water’ - I also read a dialogue
by him called ‘A Dialogue Between Phylo and Polonius’ (I think) in which he advanced
some philosophical position - and I had a paper due on Bishop Berkeley, so I wrote my
own dialogue in making my own point about his paper, in a comic vein - it was called ‘A
Dialogue Between Hi-lo and Bolonius’ - maybe 2-3 pages, I still have it - right after that,
for some reason, I felt the urge to write - first, I wrote 3 haiku poems, as I had been
reading the Japanese masters - Basho, Buson and Isso - then I wrote maybe a
half-page poem about the first imagined encounter between Neanderthal and
Cro-Magnon peoples - then I had an idea for a comic novel - about the government
versus an environmental group, involving porpoises and clones - and I started writing it -
in the middle of the second chapter, the novel just shifted into dialogue, and the whole
thing became a play - I never looked back, for good or for worse, and I never attempted
prose, again - except for a couple of short stories I wrote years later - dialogue was the
natural form for me to express my creative self, I found out quickly - I still have that play,
called ‘Operation Sea Dog’ - I pulled it out and read it, and have started to transcribe it
into pica type, as it was written on a script typewriter - maybe I’ll re-write it - anyway, the
first few pages of that seminal play (for me) I have just uploaded to this website - scroll
down until you see the picture of the porpoise - and there’s the link to the 5 pages I
have transcribed, so far - I’m still working to complete ‘Lake Brimstone” and ‘Crest of the
Waves’, but I think I can take on this additional project.. Ed
Sunday, May 22, 2016: I transcribed and re-wrote the second scene of my play,
‘Operation Sea Dog’ - finished the scene this morning, and uploaded it to scribd.com,
the internet library where I post my writing - there’s a link to it below, by the picture of
the smiling porpoise - I had misplaced the first page of the scene and was looking for it
in the piles of my old writing from Operation Sea Dog - there were multiple copies of
each scene - one scene has about 60 pages! - I see that I wrote, forty years ago in my

first real attempt at writing a play, hundreds of pages - both hand-written and pica-typed
- of ‘Operation Sea Dog’ - it may have as many as 12 scenes - I can’t remember why I
never completed a final draft of the play - maybe because I was young, and there were
a lot of distractions in my life at the time - I was painting houses 7 days a week, and at
night I’d go out to blues and jazz clubs - maybe that was it - I’ll keep working at, and
posting, the re-write of ‘Operation Sea Dog’, but I mustn’t forget about the two plays I
am finishing up - ‘Lake Brimstone’ and ‘Crest of the Waves’ - I seem to be doing more
writing than ever.. Ed
Thursday, January 12, 2017: I'm back! - got my website back up and running after a
several month hiatus - also finished 3 plays last year, wrote a short one-act, had a 15
minute phone chat with the New York producer Ken Davenport after I joined his PRO
outfit, and we held an audition for 'The Glimmer' reading to be on Sunday, March 5,
12-5pm, at The Flight Deck theater in downtown Oakland, California - also, I had to
update my old Apple laptop with the latest free software download called Sierra -
unfortunately, it has really slowed down my computer, and so I will have to contact
Apple about speeding up my computer - hope I don't need a new one - meantime, since
I'm not running any Google ads currently, maybe nobody is reading this - all in due time
- anyway, hello! - and I'll get back to you with more details of my writing successes,
failures and travails.. Ed
Saturday, January 14, 2017: We have a lot of catching up to do - I hope to work on at

least four things this year - 1) I want to expand the little Ten Minute One-act play I wrote
for a contest in NYC this summer (it didn't win, show, or place) tilted 'Push The Lever' -
it's a "bar play", like 'The Iceman Cometh' (without the O'Neill talent) - I've thought about
this play for maybe 10 years, and wrote the one-act as a way to get something on paper
- I would like to expand the play into it's full-length form - I'll post the one-act shortly, if I
haven't already; 2) I want to begin the third play in my Gothic trilogy - the first being
'Lake Gothic', the second being 'Lake Brimstone' (which I finished this past year) -
I think both are posted on this website - and the third play is going to be 'Lake Ambrosia'
(ambrosia being the food and drink of the Greek gods) - it will take place in one set up in
Zeus's throne room - on a white cloud floating in a blue space with a large ornate throne
centerstage, or somewhere - the same earthly writers from the other two plays will make
their appearance (Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John
Polidari), interacting with Zeus, his wife Hera(?), Zeus's girlfriends, the various gods,
etc. - have no idea what the plot will be; 3) begin the third play in my trilogy about the
life of my grandfather/sea captain - the first being a one-act (it just turned out that way)
called 'Return From Bird Island', where as a teenage boy, he is forced to go to sea on
the old sailing ships after his father is gone, the third being "Crest of The Waves',
(I know, out of sequence - it just turned out like that), which I completed this past year,
about my grandfather as an old retired sailor trying to get his grandson onto the sea;
and the second in the trilogy, which I will start and will be called 'Pittsburgh Steal', about
my grandfather as a middle-aged captain with a schizophrenic daughter who has a
husband and family, and the effects of the illness upon everybody; and 4) a play about
Robert Frost, the poet, and J.J. Lankes, a lithographer who illustrated some of his books
of poems - the play now tentatively titled ‘Print of a Poem' - I came upon this idea for a

play when my father passed earlier this century, and I inherited some lithographs
through his father, my other grandfather, who was a doctor in Gardenville, a suburb of
Buffalo, where J.J. Lankes also grew up - I am speculating that perhaps Lankes traded
the prints for medical services, or maybe they were just friends - when I researched
Lankes, I found this connection to Frost - both admired each other's work, and decided
to collaborate in a way on 'New Hampshire', Frost's first Pulitzer Prize winning book of
poems, to which Lankes contributed a half dozen lithographs illustrating some of the
poems - I started work on this idea last Fall, and am doing the research by both reading
about them, and reading some of their correspondence - plus reading Frost's poems
and looking at Lankes' prints - recently, I have been trying a new way to approach each
play I write - I put a Greek-style chorus in 'Lake Brimstone', wrote 12 songs for 'The
Person of No Consequence', my full-length musical adaptation of Gogol's 'The
Overcoat' (started 30 years before the recent 'The Coat' adaptation of the same story),
my use of 8 bells (as in a "watch" on a ship) instead of 8 scenes, or 2 acts, in 'Crest of
The Waves' - but to date, I haven't come up with any new way to approach this play -
and am wondering, where's the conflict in a 37 year friendship, or any plot? - we'll see -
I can always not write it - besides reading the poems and viewing the lithographs, I have
been trying to find a "voice" for each of the two men - for Frost, I have written about 50
poems (the sum total of which are not equal to the artistic merit of any one line in Frost's
poems), and I bought some little woodcarving knives and a couple of pieces of Southern
pine, and have sketched the small hill which is my back yard on one piece of wood, and
carved it out in relief - I will buy the ink and paper and print it, after I sketch on the other
woodblock and carve it out and print it - I figure, as long as I'm doing this, I might as well
put together a book of my poems with my lithographs, like 'New Hampshire', which I
subsequently bought - book to be called 'El Sobrante', my humble abode, and print a
limited number of short books to be given away - I'll figure out how to do it, and I know I
can do it - with that in mind, I am now going to sketch what I see out the window above
my laptop: my 50 year old, 30 foot tall, leafless Elm tree, in all its hoary glory - oh yes, I
did just write that... Ed
Tuesday, January 24, 2017: Some change, some progress, some frustrations - for
change, the date for the reading of 'The Glimmer' has been changed from March 5 to
February 11, 3pm - 5pm at The Flight Deck theater, 1540 Broadway at Telegraph,
Oakland, CA - it's free, my plan is to offer free libations at intermission, and I will be
offering for sale percentages of 'The Glimmer' copyright, which I own, and will retain
controlling interest - see the posted "The Glimmer Flyer' above, for more details on this
copyright offer - this change has been catalyzed by the director, Sylvia Baeza, being
involved in an accident a few weeks, involving recovery - as far as progress, I have
started writing the third play in my Gothic trilogy, previously called 'Lake Ambrosia', but
now called 'Lake Olympus' - I have written 10 pages of the Romantic writers Percy
Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidari going up to Mount Olympus, home
of the gods, to try and convince Zeus to intervene and prevent Percy's early death -
which Percy learns of through a Persian mystic in the first play of the trilogy, 'Lake
Gothic'- the middle play taking place in the underworld and called 'Lake Brimstone' - the
first two plays and the beginnings of 'Lake Olympus' are posted on this website, below
this diary - finally, as for frustrations, I have started working on 'Print of a Poem’

(tentative title), about the friendship between Robert Frost, the poet, and J.J. Lankes,
the lithographer - in order to find their voices, so far I have written 50 poems and made
3 lithographs - I plan to print the best of both in a short book called 'El Sobrante' (my
humble abode), as a faint echo of Frost's 1923 Pulitzer Prize winning book of poems,
'New Hampshire' - so far in my research, I see Frost's public recognition of, and
financial return from, his poetry contrasting with Lanke's similar artistic accomplishment
in his own art form of wood carving and printing, but with little recognition or financial
return - I'm don't have the artistic ability of either of these two men, but I do feel Frost's
concern with his public's recogniton and expectations versus Lanke's frustration with not
being recognized by the public, while struggling financially - is anyone out there? - more
to come when I have more time - stay tuned.. Ed
Saturday, January 14, 2017: We have a lot of catching up to do - I hope to work on at

least four things this year - 1) I want to expand the little Ten Minute One-act play I wrote
for a contest in NYC this summer (it didn't win, show, or place) tilted 'Push The Lever' -
it's a "bar play", like 'The Iceman Cometh' (without the O'Neill talent) - I've thought about
this play for maybe 10 years, and wrote the one-act as a way to get something on paper
- I would like to expand the play into it's full-length form - I'll post the one-act shortly, if I
haven't already; 2) I want to begin the third play in my Gothic trilogy - the first being
'Lake Gothic', the second being 'Lake Brimstone' (which I finished this past year) - I
think both are posted on this website - and the third play is going to be 'Lake
Ambrosia' (ambrosia being the food and drink of the Greek gods) - it will take place in
one set up in Zeus's throne room - on a white cloud floating in a blue space with a large
ornate throne centerstage, or somewhere - the same earthly writers from the other two
plays will make their appearance (Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John
Polidari), interacting with Zeus, his wife Hera(?), Zeus's girlfriends, the various gods,
etc. - have no idea what the plot will be; 3) begin the third play in my trilogy about the
life of my grandfather/sea captain - the first being a one-act (it just turned out that way)
called 'Return From Bird Island', where he, as a teenage boy, is forced to go to sea on
the old sailing ships after his father is gone, the third being "Crest of The Waves', (I
know, out of sequence - it just turned out like that), which I completed this past year,
about my grandfather as an old retired sailor trying to get his grandson onto the sea;
and the second in the trilogy, which I will start and will be called 'Pittsburgh Steal', about
my grandfather as a middle-aged captain with a schizophrenic daughter who has a
husband and family, and the effects of the illness upon everybody; and 4) a play about
Robert Frost, the poet, and J.J. Lankes, a lithographer who illusrtrated some of his
books of poems - the play now tentatively titled "Print of a Poem' - I came upon this idea
for a play when my father passed earlier this century, and I inherited some lithographs
through his father, my other grandfather, who was a doctor in Gardenville, a suburb of
Buffalo, where J.J. Lankes also grew up - I am speculating that perhaps Lankes traded
the prints for medical services, or maybe they were just friends - when I researched
Lankes, I found this connection to Frost - both admired each other's work, and decided
to collaborate in a way on 'New Hampshire', Frost's first Pulitzer Prize winning book of
poems which Lankes contributed a half dozen lithographs illustrating some of the
poems - I started work on this idea last Fall, and am doing the research by both reading
about them, and reading some of their correspondence - plus reading Frost's poems

and looking at Lankes' prints - recently, I have been trying a new way to approach each
play I write - I put a Greek-style chorus in 'Lake Brimstone', wrote 12 songs for 'The
Person of No Consequence', my full-length musical adaptation of Gogol's 'The
Overcoat' (started 30 years before the recent 'The Coat' adaptation of the same story),
my use of 8 bells (as in a "watch" on a ship) instead of 8 scenes, or 2 acts, in 'Crest of
The Waves' - but to date, I haven't come up with any new way to approach this play -
and am wondering, where's the conflict in a 37 year friendship, or any plot? - we'll see -
I can always not write it - besides reading the poems and viewing the lithographs, I have
been trying to find a "voice" for each of the two men - for Frost, I have written about 50
poems (the sum total of which are not equal to the artistic merit of any one line in Frost's
poems), and I bought some little woodcarving knives and a couple of pieces of Southern
pine, and have sketched the small hill which is my back yard on one piece of wood, and
carved it out in relief - I will buy the ink and paper and print it, after I sketch on the other
woodblock and carve it out and print it - I figure, as long as I'm doing this, I might as well
put together a book of my poems with my lithographs, like 'New Hampshire', which I
subsequently bought - book to be called 'El Sobrante', my humble abode, and print a
limited number of short books to be given away - I'll figure out how to do it, and I know I
can do it - with that in mind, I am now going to sketch what I see out the window above
my laptop: my 50 year old, 30 foot tall, leafless Elm tree, in all its hoary glory - oh yes, I
did just write that... Ed
Wednesday, February 1, 2017: I’m writing this entry on William Shakespeare, the great
Bard - what I’m writing is from memory of readings on Shakespeare I made several
years ago. I could be wrong on some details, and much of what I read was speculation
itself, but what I distilled from those books forms my beliefs about William Shakespeare
the man...
When I was a boy, I had a vision - that I was in a flat field during a hot summer - on
the far side of the field, were the walls of a medieval city - maybe London - or maybe the
wall of a medieval two story building - between myself and the wall were a few low
trees, maybe a hundred feet from me - below the trees was a crowd in medieval dress,
three or four deep, in a circle - banners flying above - and in the center of the circle
were actors performing a scene from a play - I don’t what play - and I never got closer to
the scene than that - I felt it was Elizabethan England, and I don’t know why - fast
forward forty years, and I’m researching my family name of Ballou - found that the first
Ballou, first name of Maturin, had come to the Rhode Island of Roger Williams, as a
penniless indentured servant - came from England in his 20‘s, in about 1640 - meaning
he was probably born around 1615, and was living about the time William Shakespeare
was still alive, who was born in 1664 and died in 1616 - that doesn’t mean he knew
Shakespeare, but he might have heard of him, as Shakespeare was a well known
playwright, even in his own 20’s - and who knows, maybe Maturin was that guy
watching that play from a distance - and maybe I’m his reincarnation, you know?
As part of my mortal coil, I work part time as a substitute teacher at an alternative high
school on a junior college campus - the kids are cool and I like the campus; I like the
people I work with; I like the scene - I was the long term substitute for a Social Studies
teacher there for a year and a half, and I learned to teach Social Studies, although my
credential area is Math - during my breaks between classes, I would go into the library

of the junior college, which amazingly enough had a great collection of Shakespeare
plays, including Folios, as well as many books on his life and times - and I read them all
- just read another one this morning, in that same library - and this is my take on whom I
believe William Shakespeare was...
I had previously read books espousing theories that Shakespeare was really the Lord
of Southhampton, or the Earl of Oxford, or Roger Bacon, or Christopher Marlowe, etc.,
but I never really bought their theories - I believe Shakespeare was a guy from a small
town on the River Avon in central England - Stratford-on-Avon, about 70 miles northwest
of London - his father was a glove maker, married the daughter of a local noble, and
bought a big house - Shakespeare obtained maybe an eighth grade education - but one
which, at that time, was quite rigorous, some of it perhaps on the level of college
classes - among other things, he was reading Ovid (the Roman poet) in the original
Latin (I think), and reading other classics and histories, thus perhaps his proclivity to
borrow, at times, plots and settings from those histories - at eighteen, he married a
woman several years older, who was carrying their child at the time of the wedding -
I think they moved into his father’s house - as for work, I read some reference to
Shakespeare being paid as either a tutor or a part-time teacher, with maybe other
temporary jobs as well, but on no career track - and at that time, traveling theater
troupes from London used to tour the small towns of England, playing to audiences in
the courtyards of inns, where they probably stayed - some of these troupes came
through Stratford, more than once - and Shakespeare was possibly smitten by the
acting of their plays - he may have talked with actors in those troupes - one troupe was
missing an actor due to his being killed just before their arrival in Stratford - maybe they
needed another actor and Shakespeare was invited to London - perhaps he figured that
was the life for him - somehow, around age 20 or 21, Shakespeare convinced his wife -
and by then, they had three children - to let him go to London, seek his theatrical fortune
- he probably made a deal that he would send money back, and that she would stay in
his father’s house with the kids - where there was help to raise them, put food on the
table, and a roof over their heads - so Shakespeare took off for London to the Southeast
- 70 miles in those days must have been a four day trip, if he walked - later, when he
was financially set, he hired a horse - one story is that Shakespeare held the reins of
horses outside theaters as his first job - but he must have learned how to act and get
paid, as he is mentioned as playing minor roles with the troupe with whom he bonded -
perhaps the same troupe he saw at Stratford - including the role of the Ghost in Hamlet,
which he wrote in his 30’s, about the time his son, Hamnet died, either from being bit by
a rabid dog, falling from a tree, or the plague - the major roles in those plays were
played by some of the talented actors of that time - Richard Burbage for one, who was
the first box office star, and much beloved by the public - when he died, the epithet on
his tombstone read “Exit Burbage” - Shakespeare was friends with these actors, and I
believe he even wrote specific parts for them - he realized he was a writer of some
talent (!) early in London in his 20’s, as he started writing those famous sonnets
extolling the virtues of rich patrons, like the aforementioned Lord of Southhampton, who
gave him money to support his writing - and so, William Shakespeare would go back
and forth from London to Stratford to London every year - spending fall through spring in
London during the theater season, and traveling back to Stratford at the beginning of
the summer, to spend a few months with his wife and family - somewhere in his

mid-20’s he wrote his first play - maybe Henry III or Titus Andronicus - hard to tell as
many of the playwrights collaborated with each other, and sold their works to the theater
troupes, who then owned them - in those days, even a known playwright sold his work
to a troupe and had no copyright, and it was hard to know who the author was - the
defeat of the Spanish Armada happened when Shakespeare was just 24, and perhaps
this event had some impact on his starting to write plays - there’s also the famous
reference to Shakespeare by Richard Green, one of the Oxford-educated London
playwrights of the time - along with Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe - as to there
being a new writer amongst them with little formal education who thought he could write
a “Shake-scene” with the best of them - despite this, his troupe - called ‘The Lord
Chamberlain’s Men‘, and later ‘The King’s Men’ when James I came to power in 1603 -
were producing, and acting in, plays at two theaters to the north, just outside the city
limits, as plays were banned from being performed in London during two plague years
in 1596 and 1597 - one was called just ‘The Theater’, and the other was called ‘The
Curtain’, some parts of which have recently been unearthed and excavated - the actors
who could afford it, including Richard Burbage and his brother, were also owners of ‘The
Theater’ by shares - so, Shakespeare borrowed money from one of his patrons and also
bought a share of the theater - there was a dispute between the landlord who owned the
land and the actors who owned the theater - the landlord claimed he now owned the
theater, also, at the end of their lease - in order to not lose their investment, the troupe,
with the help of workman, disassembled their entire theater one winter night while the
landlord was at his country house, and stored the lumber until spring - of course, the
landlord took them to court - the troupe decided to look for a new location for a theater
south of the Thames River, but still in London - they found a site where there had been
bull-baiting and bear-baiting spectacles - they built ‘The Globe’ from scratch, using the
lumber from the original ‘The Theater”, and the troupe used ‘The Globe’ as their theater
until 1603, when the thatch roof caught fire during a scene they were performing that
involved shooting off cannons - The Globe’ burned down, but no no one got hurt, even
one man whose breeches caught fire, which he put out by dousing with a mug of ale -
with the quickness, I Imagine - while they were performing in ‘The Globe’, the troupe
included some of Shakespeare’s own plays in their repertory, and so he was not only
getting paid as an actor, a theater owner, but also as a writer - I’m not sure they had
royalties by then, but some equivalent of it, and Shakespeare started to do quite well -
by the time he was 32, he was able to buy the second biggest house in his hometown of
Stratford - with many rooms and 10 fireplaces - and move in his wife and family - you’ve
probably read more of his plays than I have, so I won’t here dwell on them -
Shakespeare also lived in that southern theater district at various times, as well as living
in north London, walking back and forth across the London Bridge, with its heads of
executed criminals peering down on him from poles - must have been a pretty sight -
Shakespeare rented various rooms where I presume he wrote, as well as slept and ate -
he did not drink to excess, though was not a teetotaler, either - and I think he mostly
kept to himself, as he was married, although there is always the Dark Lady to consider -
about this time, age 50, he decided to retire back to Stratford-on-Avon to be with his
family - I saw a few references to Shakespeare’s collaborating with other playwrights
late in his career, but it’s hard to believe a man of his artistic stature would feel the need
to collaborate, unless his powers were waning, or he was doing a favor for another

playwright - he retires to his big house in Stratford around 1614 - and he already owned
plots of land outside of town - and disappears from radar until he is reported to have
been visited by another well-known London playwright, Ben Jonson, and Drayton, a
known poet, and they have dinner followed by a night of drinking - then one story is that
they, or Shakespeare alone, go for a walk at night in a rainstorm, and Shakespeare
catches cold, becomes ill, and dies in two or three days at the age of only 52 - what a
loss! - other speculation is that he caught an ongoing influenza, or even the plague -
they bury him in the church where he used to worship as a boy, under the vestibule -
and before he dies he pens the famous epithet that is carved into his tombstone,
“Cursed be he who moves these bones.., etc.” - but I read recently there is speculation
that his bones were disturbed, as they did some sort of x-ray of his grave and coffin -
and it looked like his bones had been disturbed, and that his skull was missing.. well,
that’s what I learned about William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of all - he was
a man, lived a mortal life, but has since become a god to us - so, William Shakespeare,
that’s my homage to you! - you’re the greatest.. Ed
Sunday, February 5, 2017: Yesterday, I canceled the reading for 'The Glimmer' in
Oakland, which was first set for March 5, but then, after the director hurt her arm and
had to undergo therapy before traveling back to Chile, the date was moved back to
February 11 - we held our first audition last December 28, but still needed to cast the
key lead role of Mike, so we decided to hold a second audition yesterday afternoon,
February 4 - but when I submitted the new dates to the theater for confirmation and
billing, it took several days for approval - I went down and paid the fee in person,
although realizing by then it was too late to run an internet ad for the audition on
Theater Bay Area, so I thought I would do callbacks from the first audition and also send
out queries to a list of student actors I had obtained, as well as to a couple of previous
e-mail queries about the role - all my efforts were in vain, however, and nobody
committed auditioning, and even the actress already chosen for the lead role of Lil had
to back out - by noon of the audition day, I had only one actor willing to commit to the
role of Mike, and nobody at all auditioning for the other three roles we now had to fill -
so, I canceled, called the director, the theater, the actor for Mike - and that was it - I had
rented the performance space for the audition for one half day, for another day of
rehearsal, and rented the theater, itself, for the reading - I lost all that money per
contract, though I will get my deposit back, and some of the insurance money - so the
rented spaces will sit empty - although I offered to donate the spaces and times to any
troupe for free - the outcome is that this is a major blow to my creative endeavors, to my
ability to make things happen, to get my name out there, get my plays out there - I am a
goal-oriented person, but this time I was not able to achieve my goal - this is my third
attempt in three years at producing a reading of "The Glimmer', and I'm not sure I can
do this again - not this year, maybe no year - I know, adversity builds character - and I
will carry on, return to my writing - but if a play is written and nobody sees it, is it really a
play? - more to come as I process this creative defeat... Ed
Sunday, February 19, 2017: My dreams of a staged reading for ‘The Glimmer’ have
vanished, and with it some of my money - one of the actresses who auditioned for the
play last December has been supportive and has been trying to help me get a reading

in Berkeley at the PlayCafe, where she is involved - I told her I would go there this
coming Thursday, March 9, hat in hand and scripts in hand, in hopes of getting a cold
table reading - it’s something, and who knows where it might go? - certainly if I do not
market my plays the rest of this year, or until I get more money, nothing will happen by
itself.. creatively, I have started working on a new cycle of plays: 1) the past week I have
been working on ‘Lake Olympus’, the third play in my Gothic “Lake” trilogy, about the
Romantic writers Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidari going up to
Mount Olympus to petition the gods to change Percy’s fate, so that he lives longer for
the sake of his wife, Mary, and their child, Will-mouse, and of course himself - I have
been challenging myself these past few years to try something new each play, and I
heard a quote yesterday from the choreographer Merce Cunningham to “Try something
new, and see where it goes..”, so I decided to try transforming the Greek gods into
aliens come to earth in the Ship Olympus, which runs on ambrosia for fuel, so I did that,
and changed the name of the play back to ‘Lake Ambrosia’ - I got this idea after reading
a detailed explanation of the ancient Greek gods and myths in a 1959 copy of the
‘Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology’ which I found in the college library, and noticing
the similarity between ancient Greek myths and modern myths about the presence of
aliens on and about Earth, I copied what I had written into a new file - in case I decide to
go back to it - and I re-worked what I had into a myth about aliens - I thought, “It’s my
play, I’m the guy writing it, and I can do what I want..” - the ancient Greek myths started
out as oral myths passed down through the centuries until the Greek poet Hesiod wrote
them down about 800 BC - I must get a copy of his poems - and so, in a way, I can
perhaps attempt to add to this mythic tradition by writing this play.. 2) my play about the
friendship between Robert Frost and J.J. Lankes, tentatively titled ‘Print of a Poem’, is
somewhat on hold, as I have not written any new poems, or carved any new lithographs
- so, I’ll have to get back to that.. 3) I started writing the character list and character
descriptions for ‘Push the Lever’, my ‘Ice Man Cometh’ bar play, and decided the only
way it could work is by making it a comedy - I think I wrote some scene proposals, too..
4) I wrote scene proposals for ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, my third play in my trilogy about my
grandfather - the first being the one-act ‘Return From Bird Island’, about when he was a
boy, and the third being ‘Crest of The Waves’, about him as a retired old sea captain -
this one, the middle one, called “Pittsburgh Steal’, is a story about my family and the
effects my mother’s schizophrenia upon it, with my Grandpa making an appearance as
a working skipper of freighters, which he was - not sure I want to write this play, it’s so
personal, and I don’t want to disrespect my mother and my family, but it was always my
dream to write this as my penultimate play, a la ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night” - albeit
without the talent behind that play - we’ll see where it goes and see what I write… Ed
Saturday, February 25, 2017: These past few days, I’ve been working on ‘Lake
Olympus’ ,(AKA ‘Lake Ambrosia’) the third play in my Gothic trilogy - I’ve been posting
new versions daily on my website - I have written about four beginnings - I did try and
change it from a play involving gods to a play involving aliens - but I decided, after only
one day, that Greek gods are more interesting than aliens, and have more historical
connection with modern audiences - I also currently believe I need a play with fewer
characters, so I have jettisoned four characters from the other two plays in the trilogy:
Lord Byron, John Polidari, Claire, and baby Will-Mouse - I have nothing for them to say,

so they probably will not be making an appearance in this final Gothic play - I’m trying to
break the mold of my writing, which is funny, since it took me decades to define some
sort of style in my writing - also, I see I have come full circle in my themes, as my first
play, a one-act called ‘The Flophouse’, dwelt on the theme of free will versus
determinism - and here I am, again, with the same theme - the New York director Ken
Davenport, who I believe is a writer also, recently blogged that 80% of your time should
be given to constructing a strong foundation for your play, and only 20% given to writing
the actual dialogue, which he states is easy to write - I agree with his dialogue
comment, but there is a difference between my writing “facile” dialogue and my writing
meaningful dialogue, or perhaps “Muse-inspired” dialogue - as far as structure, I believe
I’m deficient in this area, and most of my plays are probably poorly constructed - I write
plays more organically, and try and grow them - in ‘Lake Olympus’ I already had a
concept, a set, and the characters - I just started writing the beginning of the play - now,
it’s maybe 15 pages - I kept changing and lengthening this beginning - then I would get
an idea, write a short scene, and tag it onto the beginning - I feel I can always copy,
delete, and paste that scene elsewhere if I have to - or delete it entirely - but, I did try
and create some structure to this play as I went along - turned out to be some notes on
what I might do - unfortunately for me, a lot of my play progressions and ideas about
directions, themes, and scenes come in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep -
I used to get up, turn on the light, and write them down - now, I find I can remember
them the next morning without writing them down at night - that being said, follows the
notes I have written for this play, ‘Lake Olympus’, posted right in the middle of the draft -
I’m not worried, I find it easier to refer to these notes when they’re right in the script, and
I will delete them at some point and smooth the dialogue where the notes once were:
Possible Plots / Scenes:
- explore the relative merits of immortality versus mortality
- explore the concepts of free will versus fate
- Hera takes various revenges out on the mortals Percy, Byron, Polidari, and Mary
- Claire shows up, with Will-mouse
- The Three Fates show up
- Hephaestus shows up
- Ostanes shows up
- The dopplegangers show up
- the Chorus shows up

- none of the above show up, and the play just takes place between Zeus, Hera, Echo -
perhaps Narcissus - Hermes, Percy and Mary
- Zeus and all the gods are actually aliens, and Mount Olympus is actually the mother
ship Olympus - they’ve been trying to populate the earth with their own image, and are
not succeeding too well..
- a council of gods Is called, including the Three Fates
- Percy ultimately learns of the futility of changing one’s fate
- Byron also wants to find out his fate, as do Polidari and Mary
- Zeus and Hera continue to squabble at the end
- Mary makes a deal with the Three fates that she will stay with Zeus as a consort,
while Percy gets to live longer and raise Will-mouse
- Act 1: Percy, Mary and the other mortals come up to Mount Olympus to beg Zeus to
change Percy’s Fate (he learns after ‘Lake Brimstone’ that his fate has not been
changed by Ostanes) - Zeus falls for Mary, tries to get with her - Hera finds out,
realizes Zeus is using Echo as a distraction, curses Echo to repeat everyone's last
words - Hera gets revenge on Zeus through the mortals by convincing the Fates to
leave Percy’s fate as it is…
- Act 2: Hermes intercedes on behalf of Percy and the mortals, tricks Zeus into helping
release Percy from his short fate, and then tricks Zeus into giving up on Mary - the
mortals go back down to earth in triumph, as Zeus and Hera continue to squabble -
Curtain
- Zeus falls for Mary, and tries to get with her by assuming other disguises - none of
them animal - he even assumes the guise of Percy Shelley, her husband - and Percy
finds out:
Following this, I did write a short scene where Zeus assumes the disguise of Mary’s
husband, Percy, and attempts to seduce he - you can see that new scene in the latest
draft of ‘Lake Olympus’ on this website - Ed
Tuesday, March 7, 2017: An update on my progress, or lack thereof, on the four plays
I’ve decided to work on this year: 1)‘Print of a Poem’, my play about the friendship
between J.J. Lankes the lithographer and Robert Frost the poet - I haven’t written any
more poems or carved any more lithographs to help me find the voices of the two men -
I did read a few more Frost poems, though, and did go over the only scene for the play I
have written so far, cleaned it up, and decided it wasn’t so bad after all; 2)’Pittsburgh
Steal’, a play based on my family life, and which is the middle play in my trilogy about
my grandfather - the first and third plays having been completed - I did write the very

beginning of the opening scene I always knew I would write - quite difficult as the
subject material is very close to me, and I especially feel guilty writing a character based
on my deceased schizophrenic mother; 3)’Push the Lever’, my ‘Iceman Cometh’ bar
play - I fleshed out the growing character list and descriptions, feeling I could always cut
some characters, combine some, or keep them as they are; and lastly; 4)’Lake
Ambrosia‘ (or ‘Lake Olympus’), the third play in my Gothic play trilogy, where only two of
the ongoing characters, Percy and Mary Shelley, go up to Mount Olympus to beg Zeus
to lengthen Percy’s life - Percy having learned previously from a mystic of his early
demise - I’ve been working mostly on this play the past month, have four versions of the
opening and a couple of other scenes, but couldn’t open three of them without some
extra file program - my laptop is balky ever since I downloaded the latest operating
system - I read that one draft, decided it was trite and facile and the characters
unbelievable - then read ‘Equus’, a 44 year old play by Peter Shaffer, where he breaks
down the barriers of staging - I’ve been searching for my own breakthrough on how to
write ‘Lake Ambrosia’, with its Greek gods and mortals, and fate versus free will - some
new way of presenting the characters and telling the story, something different that
grabs people, something new for me, a new way of writing - Peter Shaffer starts ‘Equus’
with a first scene that is actually the conclusion, and it’s the second scene where he
begins his story of a disturbed youth who has blinded horses - he makes the
progression of short scenes read like a mystery, wherein one is intrigued to keep
reading the play just to find out what really happened with the boy - a coincidence with
this play - or is it? - is that the psychiatrist treating the boy has a cold marriage, wherein
his wife knits clothes for orphans and he studies books of ancient Greek art and even
mentions Zeus on Mount Olympus - I read Schaffer’s play as I took a two day break
from my own play involving the Greek gods and Zeus on Mount Olympus, and even had
been studying the text and pictures in the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, in the
college library - I then ordered that book online to have it, and just received it - I only
picked 'Equus' to read because I had been carrying it around in my bag; I had little idea
what It was about - another thing I noticed was Shaffer's very precise stage directions -
and possibly another coincidence - Ken Davenport, the New York director, posted the
next day on his blog a piece about stage directions, including a link to a blog on a
website by playwright Sam Graber - I skimmed his blog on opinions about stage
directions from other writers and directors - my own opinion on stage directions is that I
write them as part of a play because they inform my creative consciousness - I did
notice Sylvia Baeza, the director I most like to work with, once told her actors to line out
my stage directions - I guess they got In her way - but that's okay; in fact, I'll take them
out myself, if asked - just a couple of hours of re-formatting and page numbering - and
I’ll print out a new version of the script, while keeping the old script - “whatever works”,
that's my theatrical motto…
Wednesday, July 12, 2017: Hey, I’m back, after a hiatus of too many months, typing on my new
MacBook Air - finally, a computer that responds! - I need to get back to writing, and posting, on a
regular basis - haven’t done much in the interim, since last I posted - and the year is half over! -
somebody just gave me an old book, ‘The Plays of Chekov’, published in 1924 in England - has
a sticker on for $5.98, probably from a thrift store - started reading ‘Three Sisters’, with which I
was unfamiliar - I have read and seen some Chekov, and read a biography of his life - right

away, his dialogue - mostly exposition in Act 1 - jumped out at me - he makes deep life
observations through the characters, while at the the same time opening the scene to the
greater world around them - I see the next play is ‘Ivanov’, which I believe is his first full-length
play, written at maybe age 26 - I read it about 20 years ago, but can’t remember it - the
remainder of the little book consists of some of his one-acts, none of these which I have read -
it is both an honor, and an education, to read Anton Chekov..
Well, I just finished ‘Three Sisters’ - some random observations: It took the play some time to
get going, and then I could see the plot take shape, and knew the baron was going to be shot at
the end in the duel - suspected that was how it was going to turn out, after reading and studying
‘The Sea Gull’ (“The fact is, Konstantin has just shot himself..” Curtain.) I really got into the play
as it moved along - my own characters sling lines of words at each other, while Chekov’s
characters envelop each other in clouds of magnetic dialogue that bind them together - I kept
having to go back to the character description page to remember who each character was and
what they were about; I think it’s the long Russian names - I started recognizing the depth and
types of humor Chekov sprinkles through his plays, actually underpinning his portrayal of 19th
Russian upper-crust life (although, why do they have jobs?)- his humor can be so subtle, as
when Tchebutykin speaks to the homely/pompous schoolmaster who has just shaved off his
mustache: “I might tell you what your countenance looks like now, but I really can’t.”, or be so
outrageous, as when Solyony speaks to a mother doting on her child: “If that child were mine,
I’d fry him in a frying-pan and eat him..” - speaking of the crude Army captain Solynoy, I see
now, looking back at the play, the lines of dialogue throughout the Acts that establish the conflict
between him and Baron Tusenbach, whom he kills at the end of the play in a duel - my
takeaway? - reading Chekov, or seeing his plays, makes me question why I have ever been
writing at all, it is like looking up through the clouds at the feet of a god on Mount Olympus,
knowing I can never join him - and yet, I continue on..
What to work on next? - I can’t really work on the third play in my Gothic trilogy, ‘Lake
Olympus’ until I take the old dead I-Book, with my five new scenes stuck in it after 2 weeks of
work, to a computer place to get it to boot up - then I’ll get the scenes out and into the original
document which now lives in my Time Machine, by figuring out how to convert the old format to
the new Pages format - for my ‘Iceman Cometh’ bar play, I only fleshed out the character
description list - on ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, the middle play of the trilogy about the life of my
sea-captain grandfather (the first and third plays having already been written), I have written no
more that sketchy first scene - the most work I have done these past months has been on the
currently titled ‘Print of a Poem’, my play about the friendship between the poet Robert Frost
and the lithographer J.J. Lankes - I extended the first (and only) scene several times, and did
more reading of Frost’s poems and other writings - and in the process, wrote another 10 poems
of my own - then, again read Lanke’s ‘Woodcut Manual’ and an observation of him by the
playwright Sherwood Andersen, while I carved out and made another lithograph myself (not very
well) - I now have to make more lithographs and write more poems - which reminds me, I’m
going to cobble together a little book - a’la Frost’s 1924 ‘New Hampshire’ - with my own poems
and lithographs - maybe not very good, but I can do it, just to know what the process is like..
A final thing: I am a Ken Davenport ‘Producer’s Pro’ member, and today in a blog he suggested
that studies have shown you are almost 40% more likely to accomplish a goal if you write it
down - so, here’s my first goal for the second half of my slow-starting creative year - “I will finish
a draft of ‘Print of a Poem’ by September 1, 2017 - and by September 15, 2017, I will put
together the poems and lithographs I made during the writing of ‘Print’ into a little book to be
called ‘El Sobrante’ ”.. talk to you next time - Ed

Wednesday, July 26, 2017: Okay, I got a short draft out of one of my “hanging” plays this year:
‘Pittsburgh Steal’ - took me the past week - I was supervising tutors up at the College for my
school, and as a result, I had a lot of time to work on my plays - and read other plays - as the
tutors were either awaiting students, or tutoring them - so, I finished that small book on Chekov
plays - I read ‘Ivanov’, which was much in the style of ‘Three Sisters’, but with a relatively rapid
climax, with unlikely plot twists involving at the end, of course, a shooting - and then read the
one-acts in the volume - one with the title, ‘On the High Road, a Dramatic Study in One Act’,
about travelers at an inn and their interactions - Chekov says so much in sketching his
characters through their dialogue - what an insight into Russian peasant life around 1900! - and,
again, I saw in all these plays his great sense of humor - and is he loquacious! - as isTennessee
Williams, in a book of his plays I’ve been reading since then - Williams, also, with his own sense
of humor, great scene descriptions and his nailing down of authentic dialogue between often
quite ordinary ( as well as fantastic) characters of the deep South from the 30’s and 40’s - and
how does he think up those names? - I deliberately picked the volume containing ‘Glass
Menagerie’, as I realized my play, ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, had some similarities with it in the person of
the narrator Tom, the small number of characters, and the over-riding sense of tragedy - but
how did he use such a simple story line to get noticed on the American stage? - and all his
characters talk and talk, like Chekov’s - gee, I wish my characters would do that! - instead, they
seem tongue-tied - sometimes, I wish I had never studied (on my own) Beckett, and also the
East European playwrights, early in my writing career, as they always seemed to try to say the
most with the least number of lines or words - anyway, getting back to this past week’s writing,
I first wrote another scene or two for my ‘Ice Man Cometh’ bar play - but didn’t get very far, and
ran out of direction or plot, so I thought, “I’ve been putting off writing ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, as it is so
close to me, but I have the time now, so go for it!” - and I wrote 9 short scenes over the next
week, edited them a couple of times, and as usual, tried to discern a plot - again, not how to
write a play - but there it is, so far - the middle play in the trilogy - the first and third plays having
been already written - about my sea-faring grandfather’s life - he only makes a one- scene
appearance in this play, to provide through-line continuity for the theme - I have just posted
“Pittsburgh Steal’ on my website - it has a picture of a Pittsburgh steel mill, not belching smoke,
but standing solitary against a cold blue sky - I spent some time this morning perusing images
for the play that were in the public domain, and I chose this one, so far - you notice I have an
image for almost all my plays - actually, this particular image appears twice in a row before the
text, so I’ll have to fix that - again, I stand at the feet of giants whenever I write (forget about
standing on their shoulders!), so it can be quite depressing for me to look at my work, after
reading their work - but, oh well, I continue onward (“En avant!”, as Williams said).. by the way,
as per the current flap over the potential danger of Artificial Intelligence - you might read ‘R.U.R.
- or ‘Robert’s Universal Robots’, by Karl Capek, I believe, maybe a Hungarian writer - written
almost a hundred years ago about robots who take over the factory where they are made… Ed
Tuesday, August 29, 2017: Here’s where things are at: I am working on something - the middle
play, ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, in my trilogy about my grandfather, the first and third plays having
already been written - the first play is a one-act about my grandfather as a boy on the island in
the Caribbean where he was born - he was forced to go to sea as a cabin boy on the old
sailing ships, after the demise of his father - it was meant to be a full-length play, but just wrote
itself into a one-act - that’s okay - later, I wrote the third play in the trilogy, about my
grandfather as an old retired sea captain in Florida, with all his retired friends, and his visiting
grandson, who he tries to get on to the sea - then his grandson’s black girlfriend comes down
seeking him, and that presents a problem - anyway, I wrote it - the middle play is mostly about
my grandfather’s daughter who was my mother, and the schizophrenia that plagued her adult

life - my grandfather, now recently retired, shows up to visit her her in the hospital - but most of
this play consists of the interaction between the characters based on my mother, my father and
myself - because it is so close and personal to me is why I delayed writing it - but it is now time
to write it, before the Muse only whispers to me - so far, I have about 50 pages in10 scenes - I
also have developed another main character - The Voice that Dee, the main character based
on my mother, hears in her mind as part of her schizophrenia - I decided to make it one voice
rather than several, and to make The Voice have a personality - rather an evil one - and have
The Voice function as both a confidant of Dee and a voice of conflict within Dee, a voice with
whom she argues - I am trying to stretch out my own writing voice, and break out of the writing
barriers my early study of Beckett and the East European playwrights self-imposed upon me -
so far, with limited success - all I can think to do is spontaneously write scenes for this play as
they occur to me - and I just finished a scene a minute ago which may be the final scene of
‘Pittsburgh Steal’- we’ll see - but, this is still not the effect I am looking for.. my other 3 plays
are stalled much like Hurricane Harvey over Houston - I worked on my barroom play, ‘Push The
Lever’, a little as far as character lists and I forget what else (it’s been two months since I
worked on it) - I worked on my Robert Frost/J.J. Lankes play, Print of a Poem’, earlier in the
summer, basically extending the one scene I already had - I am looking for a plot for it, and
must order a book I found that catalogues all the correspondence between the two artists - my
fourth play, ‘Mount Olympus’ (or ‘Mount Ambrosia’), which is the third play in my Gothic trilogy,
is stuck in my old I-book laptop, on which I wrote 5 new scenes for the play after my MacBook
laptop slowed down - but the I-Book stopped booting up, and I need it worked on to recover
those scenes - since then, I bought this new MacBook Air, upon which I am now composing
these lines.. talk to you later - Ed
Saturday, September 16, 2017: I just started my eighth draft of ‘Pittsburgh Steal’, my play
about my schizophrenic mother and the effect of her illness upon her, and upon our family - it’s
a very personal p[ay, and so I had put off writing it - it’s the middle play in a trilogy in which the
first and third plays have already been written - I am trying to break out of my writing style, or
my writing constraints, and really explore the story more through the characters and what they
say and think and do - as an aside, it is hard for me to channel my mother and her struggle
with her mental illness - so far, I’ve been writing her from the periphery, recognizing only that
she seemed to believe she was alone in her fight, that her family had turned against her - I
have been writing a narrow linear play, and now I’m trying to widen it, and to stretch out, free
myself in the telling of the story - I have personalized the schizophrenia in the form of a voice
heard by Dee, the lead character - instead of voices, she hears only one voice - called “The
Voice” in earlier drafts, but now called “Tanya” in this eighth draft - among other bizarre ideas,
Tanya suggests to Dee that things that she hears, or thinks, on one day, may sometimes
reappear on a subsequent day, or in subsequent conversations - Tanya suggests these
coincidences are actually rips in the fabric of time which can help us foretell some of the future
- a crazy idea, but hearing voices is not so sane, either - another thing I am doing in this play is
to have the characters step out of a scene into another, or previous, scene to digress - instead
of using a character as a narrator before a scene, or between scenes, to occasionally describe
their own actions - “showing instead of telling” - even if I don’t make much progress on this
play on a particular day, I do find the more time I spend on a play, start to live with it, the more
the characters talk to me, or through me - so far, I have 7 characters in 10 scenes, over maybe
60 pages - I’ll post this latest draft by Saturday on my website at 2020glimmer.com - I have the
feeling this play is going to take some time to write, so I better start working on one of my other
works-in-progress in which I have less emotional investment, if I am to complete anything this
year, or even relatively soon - I finally went to some theater last weekend - August Wilson’s
‘Radio Golf’, the last play in his ten play cycle - last summer I read Wilson’s ‘Jitney’, which I
liked, because it was set in Pittsburgh, where I grew up - I got an e-mail advertising the
performances of ‘Radio Golf’, read a review of it, and also decided to see the play because it
was being staged by MET - the Multi Ethnic Theater, a non-profit theater founded by Lewis

Campbell, who was the Scenic Designer for this play - he was also the director of two one-acts
I paid to have MET produce in 2008 in San Francisco - the lead in one of those one-acts, called
‘The Glimmer’, was Vernon Medearis - and he was also featured in ‘Radio Golf’ which was
performed in a bar/restaurant in the Tenderloin District - there was almost as much drama
walking from BART through the dozens of homeless people camped on the sidewalks as there
was on stage at the PianoFight theater - the play was well done, although I think it’s hard to get
emotionally involved in a play that is set around a story about real estate and redevelopment -
but it was still good - after the play, I re-introduced myself to Vernon, told him I had expanded
‘The Glimmer’ into a full-length play, and that I thought he could play the lead in the new play -
he said he thought he could, and so I sent him ‘The Glimmer’ through the MET website, with a
note to Lewis - we’ll see if anything comes of it - talk to you next time.. Ed
Friday, November 17, 2017: I’ve been working on the ninth draft of ‘Pittsburgh Steal, my play
about a woman with schizophrenia and its effect upon her marriage. I’ve personified the voices
she hears into one voice, originally called Tanya, but now called Elan, on the advice of my
director friend in New York, who read a draft. I’ve started to expand the play outward, instead
of sticking to a more narrow linear approach, having a couple of characters stand outside their
scene and narrate to the audience. Since then, I’ve decided to have all the characters do a
narrative speech - even the waiter who has no lines in the play, except for his short narration to
the audience. First I wrote all the speeches in a separate file - then, after I cleaned them up, I
copied and pasted each into the place best suited for them in the play, and cleaned them up
some more, depending on their context. I also had Elan assume an ethereal on-stage presence
in white in the last scene only, and instead having her just disappear offstage as in the
previous drafts, I had her walk through the fence between the freeway and the frontage road
the little duplex sits on - we hearth sounds of her getting hit by a car on the freeway, and when
the car stops, offstage dialogue indicates no one is found - I don’t know, I just tried it. The
other idea I am trying out is that Dee, the woman with schizophrenia, has her mental illness
triggered by a fire set by her husband, Vaughn, on a hillside above their house, so that he can
collect the insurance money - the fire is traumatic for Dee because her young son almost loses
his life in it, and she barely saves him. Also on the advice of my director friend, I added a last
scene as an epilogue, where Dee is 20 years older in a wheelchair at an assisted living home,
unable to speak coherently - her son, her only child, comes to visit her a last time, her husband
having passed away - at the very end, Dee has passed (spoiler alert!), and her son, Teddy,
addresses the audience in one last narration, summing up (I hope) both the tragedy of his
mother’s life, as well as the beauty inherent in it. I’ve decided to step away from this play for a
few days or more, to gain some perspective on it - so, I have been re-visiting my other three
current projects: I just re-read ‘Push The Lever’, my O’Neill ‘Ice Man Cometh’ play, and right
now, having nothing new to add - the third play in my Gothic Trilogy, ‘Lake Olympus’, has five
new scenes stuck in an old laptop that died, and I am considering when to take it in for,
hopefully, a re-start of the computer - as for my incipient play about the friendship between
Robert Frost, the poet, and J.J. Lankes ,the lithographer, I went to order a book on Amazon,
‘Riders on Pegasus’, about their correspondence through the years with letters, but the
website said I had already ordered the book almost a year ago - and did I want to order it
again? - I did have some memory of ordering it, but when the book never arrived, I forgot about
it - so, now I contacted the publisher - turned out they had debited my account for it and then
shipped it - when I took the tracking number to the Post Office, they looked it up, said they
couldn’t locate it, and to call two numbers, one an 800 number, which I will do today - that’s
where things are at, although I again made a list of the things I have to do in order to stage a
reading of ‘The Glimmer’ - you will not be noticed until your plays go from the “page to the
stage”, says Ken Davenport, the New York producer… Update, next day: I did call the two
numbers the Post Office gave me - one was a Consumer Affairs number that kept me on hold
ten minutes, only to tell me with a recording that no one was available - my first complaint:
Why can’t is there no one to talk to me? - but, I leave a message instead, with some details

about my quest for my book - the 800 number I then called, assuming it is the Post Office
national headquarters in Washington, where the main computer will be able to track my book -
turns out to be a recorded solicitation for a Medic Alert bracelet, and when I decline, it shifts to
a recording only telling me I’ve won a free three-day vacation for a trip to Fort Myers, Orlando,
and the Bahamas - I only have to pay the taxes, plus $47 - and I presume, the airfare - ah, the
Post Office - I shall battle on with them - I’ve learned the only way to defeat bureaucracy is to
outlast it - talk to you… Ed

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My ongoing Playwriting Diary 2015 - 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Wednesday, December 2, 2015: Completed another draft of ‘Lake Brimstone’ - I kind of

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Wednesday, December 23, 2015: I worked on ‘Tapestry of a Conquest’, again - in the

Tuesday, December 29, 2015: I haven’t gone back to writing on ‘Tapestry of a

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Saturday, January 14, 2017: We have a lot of catching up to do - I hope to work on at

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Saturday, January 14, 2017: We have a lot of catching up to do - I hope to work on at

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Possible Plots / Scenes:

- explore the relative merits of immortality versus mortality

- explore the concepts of free will versus fate

- Claire shows up, with Will-mouse

- The Three Fates show up

- The dopplegangers show up

- the Chorus shows up

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

- a council of gods Is called, including the Three Fates

- Percy ultimately learns of the futility of changing one’s fate

- Zeus and Hera continue to squabble at the end

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

Copyright Ed Ballou, 2017

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