I’ve done something new. I’ve written a play!

Here’s how that came to be. I’m living now in Abiitan, a senior housing apartment building in downtown Minneapolis.  Abiitan is known for providing cultural programs for its residents.  We have lectures, classy films, concerts… When the Pandemic came, all these programs were switched to Zoom.

In the autumn, Abiitan offered a play writing class—on Zoom, of course. The course would have six sessions and would be taught by Savannah Reich, an accomplished playwright who has a fellowship with the Playwright Center in Minneapolis. I signed up immediately.

We had a class of six students—none of us had ever written a play before. Our assignment was to write a 10-minute play.  None of us had even heard of such a thing as a 10-minute play.

Savannah was an incredible teacher. She began by having us read a few, diverse examples of 10-minute plays and giving us short writing exercises. We quickly dove into the process of writing our own short plays.

I knew what I wanted to do almost as soon as the class began. My book, THE JOURNALIST, had just been published. It’s the story of my brother, Jerry Rose, who was a journalist in Vietnam in the early 1960s.  My brother died 55 years ago. I wrote this book in “collaboration” with him, based on his journals, letters and other writings.

My play, “The Ghost Writer,” is about the experience of ghost-writing this book—as if my brother were sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

At the end of the course, on November 20, we had a Play Reading Festival. Real actors did the readings. It was an amazing evening of entertainment—all done on Zoom. Savannah did the introductions.

My play has two characters: Lucy Rose, read by Barbara Reid, and Jerry Rose, read by Ryan London Levin—both wonderful, professional actors.

You can watch my play—“The Ghost Writer”—here:

https://youtu.be/YVvqpIfx09Q

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this special experience—thanks to Savannah Reich, Abiitan, and Sulia Altenberg, the assistant program manager who arranged for this project.