Hi and Welcome to the Drama Circle Blog!
Some new directions are planned for Drama Circle. These include this blog and a new publishing venture. Our initial offering will be “The Lover at the Wall,” a compilation of three of my full-length plays written and developed over the past decade or so. This will officially be published this fall, but we are currently looking for positive comments about the plays to help promote this publication. So we need REVIEWERS and are offering complimentary (free) review copies of the ebook for a limited time. Printed review copies may be available as well. Go to our Publications Page for more info.
Description: “The Lover at the Wall: 3 Plays on Bahá’í Subjects.” (Read Introduction sample)
The first play, “A New Dress for Mona,” is a 2010 revision of the story of the Bahá’í martyr, Mona Mahmudnizhad. I’ve written several (OK, forty or so) versions of this play, many of which have been produced along the way. The goal of this rewriting has always been to make the play more closely follow the spiritual journey that Mona took and to be as true as possible to the original accounts. This 2010 revision, which was produced last year by the Dept of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina (where I teach), proved that it could make that spiritual journey accessible to a general audience. It is also as close as I could get to the factual history provided in detail by Mona’s mother in an as-yet-unpublished account. If there’s one play I could give to the world, this is it. (Read "Mona" sample)
The second play is a drama/comedy called “Band of Gold,” and it looks at the joys and struggles, both profound and subtle, of marriage, family and community by focusing on the joining of two families—both Bahá’í, but from divergent cultural backgrounds. Tahirih and Chris are college-age youth and they want to marry, much to the surprise of their families. As the two young lovers try to win their families’ consent, troubles within the families that have been percolating just beneath the surface flare up and reveal the complicated and conflicted feelings that can inhibit unity at the grassroots level. This play has had a couple of successful and joyous readings, but it has not been performed yet. It is the most Chekhovian of the plays here, meaning characters are presented with both empathy and analytical distance. (Read "Band of Gold" sample)
The third play is “On the Rooftop with Bill Sears,” which is a one-man show based on the life of Mr. William Sears (1911-1992). Mr. Sears is widely-known in the Bahá’í community for the eminent station given him as a Hand of the Cause of God, but the stories he tells of his childhood and early life are very much down-to-earth. He was very funny and yet there was an overarching seriousness and an enormous dedication in his life, his talks and his writings. This play picks a moment in Mr. Sears’ life when he made a crucial decision that would change the course of his life. It was 1953 and he was doing quite well for himself in the new field of Television. Then he decided to pack it all in and move to Africa… This play explores not just why he would do that, but it begs the question: what must WE do to rise to our highest destiny and live up to our great calling? (Read "Rooftop" sample)
These 3 plays have absorbed an enormous amount of my time since 1998. It is my earnest hope that through the publication of this volume I can let them go and free them into the world. Go to the Publications page of the Drama Circle website to read extended samples from the introduction and the plays of “The Lover at the Wall.” If you wish, you may also buy a pre-publication copy of "The Lover at the Wall" at Lulu.com.
Signing off,
Mark
"The drama is of the utmost importance. It has been a great educational power in the past; it will be so again." - 'Abdu'l-Bahá
