I enjoyed working with David Snider, an experienced theater director and manager, and with the Hubbard Hall actors who were reading my play aloud Monday night. All writers are egotists at heart, and so are all actors, I imagine. We understood one another right away, I think and I loved the way they threw their ideas about my play around, it was a kind of living editing and collaborative that book writers do not get to experience very often. I could feel my play – “Last Day At Maple View Farm” come to life, shed it’s excess fat, lose some of it’s wordiness, find it’s focus, chuck it’s occasional preachiness.

When the first night of readings was done, David Snider (the executive director on the left) and I looked at one other, we both had that gleam of a good creative experience, there is not too much like it. Tonight, I sent David two additions to the play, to help lighten up one part that seemed too heavy to both of us. Each time the play is read aloud, it takes form, evolves, right up to the last minute. Writers and playwrights are notoriously grumpy and difficult about seeing their words cut, I have never felt that way, editing has always improved my work, without feedback there is stasis, you cannot grow and learn.

I like this photo, it captured the intensity of the experience. My play will be shown along with other works, at Hubbard Hall’s Winter Festival Of New York, a showcase for new works. “Last Day At Maple View Farm” is performed as a staged reading, not a full production.