I attended the third staged reading of “Last Days Of Maple View Farm” at Hubbard Hall this afternoon – going again tonight and then for the last show, tomorrow at 2 p.m., pre-Super Bowl and next winter storm. After each performance, Hubbard Hall Executive Director David Snider (second from left) calls the playwright and some of the actors up on stage to take questions from the audience.

The other people on stage wrote and performed Act One of “Wayward Ho,!” a timely and hip musical, we all took questions together, the two works are a good pairing, I think we have not seen the last of one another.  It has been a tiring week, my flu and bronchial aftermath have steadily improved and except for some lingering viral bronchitis, I am feeling strong and healthy.

It has been an exhilarating week for me, I loved the way the play is coming together, David has encouraged me to finish it and offer it for production at Hubbard Hall or elsewhere. This is a play about the death of a dairy farm, and it is a community filled with dairy farms, many struggling, so the play hits especially close to home here. It’s theme of how human beings come to terms with being discarded people – a common experience in the American workforce – is hitting home I believe.

Each performance is different, each crowd it different, the play is an organic and evolving thing. I definitely have gotten the playwright bug. I appreciate the wonderful things people are saying to me about it. Still, lots of work to do if it is to be completed and flushed out.