In 2010, I was married to an actress. She had done a few shows with a local theatre and was asked by a producer to direct a play as part of a program of one-acts. She was struggling with finding a play she wanted to stage and, being the helpful, wonderful husband I was, I offered to write her one. She said okay and I did. That play was You Don’t Remember Me, Do You?
I had written a variety of things since I was in college. Short stories mostly. But rarely finished anything. I was the classic, sad example of the writer who would start a project, lose faith in it, and set it aside to work on later - which, of course, I never did. Instead I found a new shiny idea and worked on that one until I set it aside, too. Eventually, I accumulated boxes and files full of unfinished works.
But this time I had someone counting on me. So I finished it. She liked it. The people coordinating the production liked it. It was staged and it was a success. Audiences liked it so much, it was restaged the following year in a different program.
That boosted my confidence and I began writing more plays. Those plays had readings and other stagings. I got good responses. Then I put several of the one-acts together and added a couple of new ones and wrote an ongoing scene in an attempt to unify them all around a theme. I named the resulting full-length program, Humanity Stew.
Humanity Stew was selected by Corn Stock Theatre in Peoria, Illinois, for part of its winter season of productions. It was staged in February of 2015 and directed by my friend, Victoria Kapanjie-Rians.
But a few things happened between 2010 and 2015 and also from then until now. So I got distracted and once again lost some confidence. But eventually I managed to pull out of it and decided it was time to put an idea I had several years ago finally into motion - to adapt Stew into a book.
So now here it is. I actually finished it. How about that?
And that’s the backstory of “Humanity Stew.” I think I like this new finishing-things thing I got going on.