My Blog
I started posting on Facebook when Fallout was in production. But many of my friends aren't on Facebook, so I decided to collect all my posts on this webpage
Jan 31 2022
I hope lots of actors will feel as happy as I am to be back at work on a play!
It's over 2 years since we delayed auditions while we waited for the pandemic to blow over! I have never written a play so fast, or had it take longer to go on. But the universe is being kind, as its subject is more urgent than ever, and amazing things have happened that have helped me to make it as authentic as possible - like the Japanese survivor who came to campus and described what it was like to be a child in Hiroshima on the day we dropped the bomb. Now I hope for some really great actors to take the leading roles. and I'm looking forward to what we find at these long-delayed auditions!!
Feb 6, 2022
When I moved to Western Australia, I saw a play competition advertised in the local paper. So, I tried my hand at writing a play and found the work hard but fascinating. I had to tell my story through dialogue and make my characters sound convincing, whether they were men or women, old or young, conservative or progressive. My play must look good from every direction, like a three-dimensional sculpture, while an article only has the writer’s perspective, like a two-dimensional drawing. By the time I had finished my play I was hooked, and – to my amazement - it won.
I became a playwright when Australians were struggling to create a national theater. The market was swamped with re-runs of plays that had succeeded in New York or London, But Australian playwrights fought back by establishing an annual conference in Canberra where their best new scripts were workshopped and showcased by leading actors and directors. I was at that conference in the year that Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister, so I went to his elegant reception in the Lodge and heard him announce his new plan of giving grants to creative artists as well as tax write-offs to every corporation that would invest money in the arts. That was the start of a golden age for Australian film and theatre, and I was lucky to take part in it, before Penn State flew me here.
This is me outside the National Theatre in Perth when my play, The New Life, was running. It was about an immigrant woman, trying to adapt to life in Australia, and it was published and put on the school leaving syllabus for New South Wales.
A lifetime later, I feel so lucky to go back to playwriting with Fallout
February 8 2022
Playwriting is a community art. You create a scaffold of words for other people to use. After you write your play - if you're lucky - a director picks it up and brings it to life with sets and music and - hopefully - wonderful actors. These are the ones the audience remembers, because they speak ,your words. You're very far away by now since your play takes place in the audience's heads!
That is why every different production seems almost a different play. I always like to watch if I can, although it's a terrible risk because a chain is as strong as its weakest link, and one wrong link can break the illusion You can't kid yourself that your play's a success when people start checking their phones! It's by far the most dramatic medium, but then, it should be - it's theater!
I dug out this photo of a production meeting for Everyone's a General to show it's a community art
Feb 11 2022
I never planned to be a playwright, had never heard of Penn State, never imagined having a grandchild, let alone bringing her up! I’ve gradually realized that my life goes better when I don’t try to control it. I just make the best of whatever happens – and here’s the latest example: Years ago, my sister was a theatrical agent in Britain., She was approached by an American actor who graduated from Penn State, so she asked me find out more about him? His professors said he was excellent, so Philly took him under her wing, and he flourished in British theater.
Fast forward to now. Elaine’s casting Fallout and searching in vain for one part. I mention this to my sister, who says, ‘Why not try asking Doug?’
Incredible! He's been stuck in the pandemic, so he’s flying all this way, thrilled to come back to State College after so many years away! You can watch him playing Major Eatherly’s brother if you come to Fallout
Feb 14 2022
I’m very grateful to Sajay Samuel, a professor in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State, because it was at his conference on Ivan Illich in 2019 that I heard about Major Eatherly from Carl Mitcham, who once ran Penn State's Department of Science, Technology and Society.
Now, Sajay plans to record 3 discussions about issues relating to my play:
1. the link between stress and mental illness, with Greg Eghigian, a Penn State history professor who has a special interest in this area.
2. the dangers of technology, with Carl Mitcham who now teaches in China.
3. the growing threat of nuclear warfare with Jerry Brown, the ex-governor of California
The first two will be finished by the end of this month, and the third will follow soon after. I’m delighted that Sajay’s offered to do this, and I look forward very much to listening. You can hear the talks too, if you like, so stay posted! I’ll put full details on my Fallout page as soon as they are ready.
That's all for tonight, except to wish you a Happy Valentines Day!!
Feb 18 2022
The first discussion about issues raised in my play, Fallout, will focus on mental illness. It's a subject that fascinates me. In Shakespeare’s plays, Lady Macbeth was driven crazy by guilt, Othello went mad from jealousy, and Ophelia from unrequited love. Somehow this seems more plausible to me than our present-day explanation that mental illness is a chemical imbalance that can be treated with drugs. After all, I read that the pandemic is causing mental illness… Does stress cause this chemical imbalance? And do drugs merely suppress mental illness without getting at the root cause? Is that why psychiatrists can treat their patients for years without ever curing them? And how does Claude Eatherly fit into all this? Was his reaction to Hiroshima madness? Or was his the only sane reaction? Were all the other pilots mad?
Maybe the truth is that we don’t understand our own complicated minds. Maybe both ways of looking at madness are only partially true? Are they different perspectives of the same problem, one the artist’s and one the scientist’s? I look forward to hearing Greg Eghigian’s opinion when he talks to Sajay Samuel. I will be posting the discussion on my Fallout page and I wouild love to hear your thoughts.
Here is a portrait of mad Ophelia...
Feb 20 2022
I first went to the theater when I was 6, and my grandfather took us to Swan Lake. I can still see the chorus pointing the way in a graceful arc of farewell as the Prince and the Swan flew away together in their beautiful golden coach. I could hardly bear it when the curtain fell, shutting out that enchanted world. Then he took us to Where the Rainbow ends, and I felt my hair rise on my head as the rocks turned green, and shifted and sat up and turned into … The Witch!
My other grandfather always sent us to the Christmas pantomime, where Cyril Fletcher played the dame, flashing his frilly bloomers as we sang silly songs to the bouncing ball and yelled till we lost our voices about the bear creeping up behind him. The Prince was a leggy girl in long boots, while the Princess was so glamorous that my little sister couldn’t bear to be upstaged. She stood up on her seat and got a laugh of her own by yelling “I’ve got my best dress on too!”
Theater can be clever, romantic, mysterious, or bawdy… Anything works if it’s good enough. And there’s also an element of risk because those are live humans up on stage, so anything can happen…
That’s what theater means to me. Is it the same for you?
March 3 2022
Amazing that Fallout is about to go on at the State Theater as we are facing war! When I wrote it, war was the last thing on our minds. Now we talk of little else. In my play, Eatherly joined the military with unquestioning faith that he was fighting on the right side. Then Hiroshima showed that Bismarck was correct when he said that the fate of nations is decided by blood and iron. War is for soldiers like Tibbets, who saw Hiroshima as a military duty? simply a task to be carried out to the best of his ability. But Eatherly couldn’t stop seeing the Japanese as people like him, so he went crazy rather than accept that dropping the bomb was heroic. Was he a traitor? Was he insane? Or was his the only sane reaction? This play has come at just the right time to ask us all the hard questions that we may soon have to ask ourselves.