Luckily, Liz never lost her drive to write. Although she had a substantial body of work as a playwright prior to these two life-changing experiences, new work has been coming steadily, and I spoke with Liz about these defining moments in her life and the work they have inspired.

Meeting Todd in the maximum-security prison was “a revelation in many ways,” but in getting to know him, Liz was struck by “how creative the human spirit can be even when confined. Todd was funny and witty, and yet serious too, particularly about the conditions on death row and the questionable facts of his case. He was always doing things for other prisoners, writing letters and helping them out with their cases.”

Release Yearning, her play developed from interviews and visits with Todd, premiered at DiverseWorks in Houston less than two years after she met him. “I wanted to focus on the fact that prisoners are human, with a need for expression. There was so much life on death row.” Todd really appreciated the script. He wrote to her “It’s the first time I’ve seen my name in print where they didn’t describe me as a monster.”

Five years after her injury, Liz’s new short play, Nearing Velocity, was performed at the Alley Theatre in March 2008 as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She began the play “belly-up, on my back, in the hospital, and immobile except for one toe. To keep myself sane and my imagination active, I started visualizing possibilities—characters, lines of dialogue, conflicts, what-ifs. When friends would come to visit, I would ask them to write down these imaginings for me. When a friend gave me voice-activated software, that freed me to write on my own again.” 

Nearing Velocity focuses on “the automobile accident from the perspectives of the various persons involved—myself, the young man, the passenger, hospital workers—a whole world of people coming together because of this event.” Other works written since the spinal cord injury are “Body and Soul, poetry from my notes that I put together for a solo dancer, Sara Draper. I narrated at her performance, even though I still couldn’t sit up well and didn’t have firm control of my diaphragm.” And later in 2008, “I wrote Match.Cripple, a one-act comedy with the main character from Nearing Velocity, starting to date again even though she is still wheelchair-bound. The audience responded well, and now I think these two one-acts can be linked together for a full evening.”

Since The New Yorker article, Liz acquired an agent, is reviewing movie offers for “her story with Todd,” and has started a memoir for Northwestern University Press. We expect, too, there will be new interest in producing her plays.  

Diana Howie dhowie@dramatistsguild.com

How did the first commission come about? “I was acting and directing at Main Street, and I kept talking to everyone about this idea of mine to turn a children’s book about an alligator, The Great Escape or the Sewer Story, into a musical for children. I think Becky just got tired of hearing about it, so she paired me up with Marianne Pendino (as composer) to investigate the possibility.” Main Street produced it in 1985 under the title It’s a Jungle Out There. In the years since, Steve has continued to act and direct at Main Street, and Becky has asked him to adapt five other books, of her choosing, into plays for children and young adults. In addition, he was asked to adapt six classic tales into children’s plays for Express Theatre, Nashville Children’s Theater, the Children’s Museum of Houston & the Ensemble Theatre. 

“Adapting children’s books is rather wonderful to do,” Steve remarked. “They seem daunting at first because they only have about 22 sentences in them, but I write as much from the illustrations as the text. On the other hand, doing an original work like P’s and Q’s was hard – agony really for the first six to eight months. I hated the first draft!  I threw it out, and then ploughed in again with a completely different concept. It was better, but still it felt like pulling teeth at first. Finally the play got to a point where it had a life of its own, and from there on in, it was actually fun.” 

Steve had some previous experience, though, with writing an original musical, but as he remembered, “With that one, it was a total collaboration. I was a member of a theatre commune in Austin called The Combine. We all wrote, we all acted, and our 1969 rock musical Stomp!, played in several cities before Joe Papp found it and asked us to perform at The Public Theatre. After 141 performances in New York City, Stomp! went on a six-month European tour. The script wasn’t even written down until after it closed. ” 

And when he is asked “What’s next? Now that you’ve written an original play on your own?” With a gleam in his eye, Steve murmurs “All of a sudden I have all sorts of ideas for straight plays, and an idea for one that could be musicalized. Hopefully we’ll be crossing the Rubicon soon on one of them.” 

dhowie@dramatistsguild.com 

Ron Jones is a friendly man with a passion for theatre, which he has been pursuing for over 40 years, mostly directing and teaching in the Houston area. My perception was that he directed lots of new work. When I called to speak with him for an article on “what bugs him about working with playwrights on their brand new plays,” he hesitated. “I haven’t actually worked with that many playwrights on premieres.”

As he recounted, Ron had worked with Mark Medoff at Kingwood College when Ron was teaching there, but that was revisiting one of Mark’s plays. Ron also tried to find a venue in Houston where he could work with Tennessee Williams (who had seen Ron’s direction of A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur at Theatre Suburbia, and wanted to revisit Vieux Carré with Ron directing), but Williams died before the production could go forward. In fact, the only playwright Ron could remember working with on a brand new piece (other than very short ones) was Jack Heifner, on his autobiographical play Casserole at Stages Repertory Theatre many years back.

Why did I have this perception that Ron directed lots of new work? Surprisingly, he thought the same, but our definition of “new work” was the difference. As he told me, “I am an advocate of Houston premieres. I’ve probably only directed one show that has been seen here before, and that was Boys in the Band in its 25th anniversary year. I beg and plead for new plays that I have a passion for, trying to place them at the right theatre. I will take a play to an artistic director and tell them ‘This is a wonderful play – it would be a good show for you – and I would love to direct it.’ The last three plays I directed – all Houston premieres – I took to the theatre that did it.” (Three different theatres.) “Most plays I recommend I haven’t seen; I am on the Internet constantly, looking for new work, reading reviews. It is the story that usually interests me – that was the thing about Complete Stage Beauty which I just finished – it was a fabulous story.”

As to brand new work, though, Ron said,“When people ask if they can send me a new script, I tell them ‘Please, yes, send it to me, but I have no idea when I will get back to you.’ My problem is I have so little time to do that. I teach full-time, and I direct almost everything here at Lone Star College, as well as my free-lance work. But I also say, ‘Don’t send the play if you don’t want my honest opinion about it.’ Several people have sent me their plays, and they have gotten their feelings hurt. I don’t like for that to happen. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but by the same token, I feel the writer wants honest feedback – my honest reaction to it.”

Surprisingly, an old truth about Houston instantly became clear to me in a different way: We may live in a big city, but the Houston theatre world is a small community where everyone knows everyone else. We work together; we see each other at the theatres, the schools, the memorial services, the art gatherings. We are physically close to one another, and being (for the most part) sensitive folks like Ron Jones, we don’t want to hurt one another. In fact, most of us try to be as supportive as possible about each other’s work, and being honest about a new script can be akin to saying to a parent “You’ve certainly got one ugly baby there.” Closeness has its advantages, but as Ron revealed to me, closeness can also cause problems for brand new plays.

dhowie@dramatistsguild.com