A Note from the Grateful Playwright

I think I must be the oldest ‘emerging’ playwright in America. What a thrill at my age to discover I have another chance to share my thoughts and tell my stories! 

You may have come across me if you watched any TV in the 70’s and ‘80’s, so we don’t have to go into all that, but here is a brief history of me as a playwright.

In 1995, I wrote my first play, A Rage in Tenure, about a feminist professor facing her fiftieth birthday.  Her sexual politics are threatening her long and loving marriage. We produced it in Los Angeles, and, to my immense surprise, it ran all summer. Then life intervened. 

Except for an adaptation of an Ibsen play, Enemy, and a one woman show, My Kitchen Wars, I remained silent as a playwright for twenty years. I was earning a living and raising a family and running a farm.

I wrote my second play, Soft Landing, in 2015, about two old women who have bought tickets from Elon Musk for his first tourist flight to the Moon.  We produced that play in 2017, directed by the venerable John Tillinger.  

My third play, In the Bleak Midwinter had two wonderful productions in 2018 and 2019 that’s where the ideas for Play Number Four, We Have to Hurry, came from. 

My personal mandate as a playwright is to create great roles for women d’un certain age.  I feel part of an invisible and therefore underrepresented segment of our society.  So what if we are old and wrinkled and no longer able to have children or dance on a pole! 

I better get busy on Play Number Five. We don’t live forever. Hey! That’s a good title!

Remember what Oscar Wilde said: “We don’t stop playing when we get old, we get old when we stop playing.”

Dorothy Lyman