Another New Play of Mine Will Be Professionally Produced in April

My play “The Turkey Men” (see Related Posts below) was a surprising success in the professional production it was given at Evolution Theatre here in Columbus this past October, selling more tickets than any play had ever done at Evolution (though four musicals had outsold it).  Recently “The Turkey Men” was nominated for a Theatre Roundtable Award as Best Play of the Year here in Columbus, and it is now being considered for performance in other cities.  Since it was the first play I’ve ever written I assumed it was once-off event in my life, but that has proven wrong.

Evolution, which is the Columbus LGBTQ+ theater, announced that its 2020 season would begin with a Local Playwrights Festival of short plays, and submissions for a gay plays with governmental or political content were invited by January 1, 2020.  The plays were to be one act in length, with four of them then to be chosen for performance.  Mark Phillips Schwamberger, the Artistic Director of Evolution (and the power that keeps it going) told me that there were 20+ plays submitted for the four slots.

I hadn’t meant to submit a play, but I got to thinking about a recent post I had placed on my blog about gay rights in the Trump era; https://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2019/08/gay-rights-in-trump-era-bad-and-good.html.  In it I had this to say about the issue of whether the Supreme Court would likely change its mind and get rid of gay marriage:

What about gay marriage in the Trump era?  Is it likely to be dumped?  No.  We are safe on this one, and I’ll bet big money on this.  See me if you want to make such a bet and we’ll negotiate the terms.


                  

Why am I so confident?  Because the United States (and much of the world) has now had years of gay marriage and it’s all gone very well, producing almost no downsides.  Millions of gay weddings have taken place and millions more are happening every year.  This has been remarkably good for the economy (look up the figures on the internet—they are staggering—billions of dollars made each year from such unions).  Having gay couples legally married creates stability: gays who can get married show those around them that they're no different than straight couples---they are not just two queers pretending to be something they're not.  Poll numbers show that gay marriage is overwhelmingly popular with the public.  Almost everyone in this country knows gay people who are married, and most straight people have been invited to gay weddings.  This includes members of the United States Supreme Court, all of whom are likely to have gay family members and other family members supporting those gays closely watching the Justices with steady eyes. 

Moreover Obergefell v. Hodges, the case stating gay marriage was mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment, was decided in 2015 and four years later it has produced what is uniformly considered a happy result.  It is, as lawyers say, a “settled precedent.”  The United States Supreme Court is loath to overturn its precedents and rarely does so on big cases like this one.  Chief Justice Roberts is steadfast on convincing the country that the Court is not a political animal and changes in the personnel do not lead to overturning decided matters.  Most of the Justices will have no appetite for revisiting Obergefell v. Hodges.

It occurred to me that there might be a play about the Supreme Court and the possibility of the Court dumping gay marriage if the right case were to come up in the near future.  Such a play would meet the criteria for the Local Playwrights Festival: gays and the government/political issues of the day. 

I began to think about what the debate between the Justices might sound like and how it might be resolved and to my surprise I soon had a fifteen minute play to submit to Evolution.  It is called “Wrong When Decided.”

In my play a new Justice on the Court has recently sat through the oral arguments in a new case about overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, and today the Court will convene in private conference to vote and decide the case.  The play takes place in the office of that Justice who is visited by an older member of the Court.  He wants recent appointee not only to vote to overturn Obergefell but also to write the opinion of the Court and in it make the extraordinary statement that Obergefell was “wrong when decided.”  The Court only renders that harsh judgment about prior cases when it is ashamed of the original ruling.  Examples?  Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessey v. Ferguson, which had allowed “separate but equal” racial segregation of children in schools, holding that Plessey was wrong when decided.  Chief Justice Roberts stated in Trump v. Hawaii that Korematsu v. United States was wrong when it decided that it was constitutional during World War II to throw American citizens into concentration camps just because they were Japanese.  Should the Court now say the same thing about Obergefell?

The discussion these two Justices have about all this is the meat of my play.  As to how it comes out you will, of course, have to buy a ticket and come see.  The Local Playwrights Festival at Evolution Theatre Company will run April 15 through April 25.  The website is https://www.evolutiontheatre.org/.

Of course I was delighted when “Wrong When Decided” was selected as one of the four plays to be performed as part of the Festival.  Maybe I am a playwright after all, which is quite a surprise this late in my life.  I have now read the other three plays that will also be performed in the Festival and they are all splendid!  Two of them are very funny and the other, like mine, is fairly serious.  I think the audiences will be impressed with them all.  I can only hope my 15 minute effort will meet the same standard as the three other terrific plays.

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Related Posts:

“My Play ‘The Turkey Men’ Is a Hit!” October 22, 2019; https://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2019/10/my-play-turkey-men-is-hit.html

“The Thrill of My Life” My First Play Will Have Its World Premier Next Month in Columbus, September 16, 2019; https://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-thrill-of-my-life-my-first-play.html

“A Guide to the Best of My Blog”; http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-guide-to-best-of-my-blog.html