For those who don't know me my name is Jim Brown and I'm the co-writer of “Diamond Stars” with Peter and the play “Mungo” which we're hoping to take to a production sometime early in 2015. We're also looking forward to the book's appearance in the next few months and will give you all a heads up when we get a publication date.
This has been an incredible year for me as a writer. I've made my living at it for more than forty years, first as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and then later on as a TV writer for shows like “Dynasty,” “Father Dowling Mysteries,” “All My Children,” “The Guiding Light” and many other daytime dramas. It's been a great career but I frankly thought it was on the downside until 2014 when I suddenly found myself in demand as a playwright.
I'd been writing plays for several years now, developing all of them in Trey Nichols excellent playwrighting workshop where “Mungo” also first saw the light of day. The theater was my passion but I had no realistic expectations that any professional possibilities would come of it. It was fun for me and allowed me to release some creative energy.
But then the plays started landing at various theaters. My ten-minute play “Bismark” won several short play festivals and has been produced in various locales as far away as Canada. My full-length play “Poppa's Oscar” had a successful staged reading at a theater in Burbank and we're looking at mounting a full production of it soon.
My one-act “Close Your Eyes” will be performed in September as part of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival and in October my wife and I are traveling to Ashland, Oregon to participate in the week-long Ashland New Plays Festival for which my play, “The Groyser” was a winner. And we get paid for that one! My first serious money in the theater!
So when you add all of that to “Diamond Stars” and “Mungo” well...it's been quite a year already. And a very unexpected “third act” for me.
And if there are any lessons to be learned from this it is to follow your heart and passion wherever it leads...or as our old friend Yogi Berra so eloquently put it: “It ain't over 'till it's over.”