Playwright, retired

The cast of Baillie's Babes In Toyland, somewhere in Louisiana, circa mid-1990s. — The cast of “Baillie’s Babes In Toyland” on tour, circa mid-1990s. Buren Martin (left) commissioned the plays. I’m the guy with the cane.

Every once in great while, I’ll get an email from someone who’d like to talk with me about producing one of my plays. It’s at those moments that I think, “Oh, yeah. I wrote a bunch of plays, didn’t I? I should do something with them.”

And then the phone rings or Acadia jumps on my head and that’s the end of that.

Since all the scripts and all the music were written on commission, getting them produced was never an issue and recycling them … well … the two times that I tried, I got no takers. First there was the publishing company that wrote back to say that my style wasn’t a good fit for their catalog and then there was the SC Children’s Theatre, which said basically the same thing.

My plays for young audiences lack sweetness, I’m afraid.

Just like me.