I enjoy the humor you inject in the conversations, especially that back-and-forth with the investigator; the exchanges read well and true to character.
I think you also balance well the transitions of scenes between the characters' pasts and their present, and how the latter is beginning to catch up with the former but without anything being given away too soon.
This play, too, is both of its time and for our time. As I read, I can't help but think of the all the events of the '60s and '70s, and specifically the rise of such groups as the SDS and later the Weathermen (Weather Underground) and Black Panthers, how even more radicalized some of those activist groups became as the Vietnam War progressed, how members had to and did go into hiding, then eventually re-emerged, with a few even becoming upstanding academics - Angela Davis comes to mind. What interests me especially is that I cannot think of anyone on the left/far left in America today who is like the young Angela Davis or David Hoffman and calling for change that matters. Why did we have such pronounced (radical?) movements in the play's time period (and during our lives) but not now?
You perceive accurately different elements of the social and political scene back then that I'm trying to recall. And you raise a question I've pondered often over the past decade, why the energy on the left hasn't similarly recalled the past, or equaled that on the right. There are people on the left back then who'd have thought their own January 6 a dream come true. But the Jan. 6 people were just dupes for the real rightwing forces, who played a much smarter long game over decades to capture the government, where the far left then didn't come close.
I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue of that scene with Smith. It was early practice for the California crime noir that's one of my in-progress projects.
As the play continues, I keep being struck by how au courant it is ( know I said that before) --even though it takes place when the Democratic National Convention brought to it protesters of the Vietnam War. This reader always wants a love interest ... that seems pretty complicated here. Isn't it always?
For me now: I'm feeling as if, in LA, I am living under a president, who doesn't deserve that title and who thinks I am in a war zone.
All your writing, Jay, turns on the keys to the humane, the loving, the brave.
So, I await the finale.
PS: I'm hoping the photo is actually your office. In any case, love it!
As I think I said myself somewhere else, I didn't anticipate the play serialization being so timely when I first conceived doing it. Glad/chagrinned it's turned out that way. Yes, the love interest here is complicated, and I don't neglect it as the play progresses: on all fronts, much development and conflict still to come before that finale.
That is the grandest compliment you pay my writing there, Mary. I don't know how to respond other than to hide my face.
Sorry to disappoint but it is not my office! I had multiple over the years, including a quite large one when I was department chair -- and amazingly, I never took a photo of a one. The usable pickings online, were sparse. This was the only once that measured up to what I thought acceptable for David.
I enjoy the humor you inject in the conversations, especially that back-and-forth with the investigator; the exchanges read well and true to character.
I think you also balance well the transitions of scenes between the characters' pasts and their present, and how the latter is beginning to catch up with the former but without anything being given away too soon.
This play, too, is both of its time and for our time. As I read, I can't help but think of the all the events of the '60s and '70s, and specifically the rise of such groups as the SDS and later the Weathermen (Weather Underground) and Black Panthers, how even more radicalized some of those activist groups became as the Vietnam War progressed, how members had to and did go into hiding, then eventually re-emerged, with a few even becoming upstanding academics - Angela Davis comes to mind. What interests me especially is that I cannot think of anyone on the left/far left in America today who is like the young Angela Davis or David Hoffman and calling for change that matters. Why did we have such pronounced (radical?) movements in the play's time period (and during our lives) but not now?
You perceive accurately different elements of the social and political scene back then that I'm trying to recall. And you raise a question I've pondered often over the past decade, why the energy on the left hasn't similarly recalled the past, or equaled that on the right. There are people on the left back then who'd have thought their own January 6 a dream come true. But the Jan. 6 people were just dupes for the real rightwing forces, who played a much smarter long game over decades to capture the government, where the far left then didn't come close.
I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue of that scene with Smith. It was early practice for the California crime noir that's one of my in-progress projects.
As the play continues, I keep being struck by how au courant it is ( know I said that before) --even though it takes place when the Democratic National Convention brought to it protesters of the Vietnam War. This reader always wants a love interest ... that seems pretty complicated here. Isn't it always?
For me now: I'm feeling as if, in LA, I am living under a president, who doesn't deserve that title and who thinks I am in a war zone.
All your writing, Jay, turns on the keys to the humane, the loving, the brave.
So, I await the finale.
PS: I'm hoping the photo is actually your office. In any case, love it!
As I think I said myself somewhere else, I didn't anticipate the play serialization being so timely when I first conceived doing it. Glad/chagrinned it's turned out that way. Yes, the love interest here is complicated, and I don't neglect it as the play progresses: on all fronts, much development and conflict still to come before that finale.
That is the grandest compliment you pay my writing there, Mary. I don't know how to respond other than to hide my face.
Sorry to disappoint but it is not my office! I had multiple over the years, including a quite large one when I was department chair -- and amazingly, I never took a photo of a one. The usable pickings online, were sparse. This was the only once that measured up to what I thought acceptable for David.