Phew, I finally finished The Cuckoo Song. It was first written as a one-act play, performed by a community theatre cast in a small town in central British Columbia, Canada. That was way back in 1988. Maybe it was the depressing ending (with the death of one character) that kept it from being picked up by any other company since. 

The play had been sitting in the bottom drawer for a long time, and then lingered in the archive of my computer. Every now and then I’d retrieve it, edit, send it to a playwriting contest, receive suggestions from the competition readers, etc. 

This play contains more autobiographical elements than any of my other work, but i didn’t know where the characters should be heading. I still wanted to learn more about the protagonist, so I kept writing, adding more characters, and ended up with a full-length play. 

This year, 35 years after the beginning of The Cuckoo Song, the play was accepted for production of sorts. Not a full performance but a week of rehearsals culminating in two staged readings for Willamette University’s Theatre 55 during their 10th annual New Play Festival. Working face to face with a dramaturg, director and five actors became an eye-opener. And even the audience questions and comments crystallized in my mind new avenues I could take. In fact, after the performances, during the six-hour train ride home, I rearranged and rewrote those parts of the play that had bogged things down, accepting and working those people’s suggestions into the script. 

I feel that a stage play is rarely finished until its author is six feet under, but I am also confident that the new direction The Cuckoo Song has taken is good enough for a full-fledge production. So that’s a wrap. Now onto other adventures in writing.