My Play Produced in New York!

Broadway it wasn't. It wasn’t even in New York City. But it was in New York! My play was produced in Falconer, New York. At the high school.

In mid-November, Falconer Central School staged a production of my one-act play, “A Midsummer Night’s Recollection,” an Appalachian version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—specifically, the “Pyramus and Thisbe” scene from Act V, scene i. The scene where the “rude mechanicals” perform a play for the wedding feast.


I’d written my play about fifteen years ago for Grace Toney Edwards’ Appalachian Literature class that I took through Radford University for teacher recertification. For our grade, we had to do a project. I decided to translate a work of Shakespeare into a down-home Appalachian version. I got an A.

I messed with my script for a few years afterwards and even entered it into a contest where it won a third place but no money. The anonymous judge commented that I should have given the characters “hillbilly” names. (I don’t think so!)

When I taught at Ferrum College, I let Tina Hanlon post “A Midsummer Night’s Recollection” on her AppLit site. Through the years, a few schools have requested permission to stage it. I’ve always granted permission.

Falcon Productions were going to send me a video, but they had “technical problems with the recorder.” The director wrote me, however, that the play “was a real hit!”

Through the centuries, other weird versions of the “Pyramus and Thisbe” have been done—such as this one performed by sock puppets.

But, if you want a real hit—take a look at this classic Beatles version from the 1960s, with Paul McCartney playing Pyramus.




Is that Beatles' version cool, or what? Too bad they didn't have my script.

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