Quick Links
Besides poetry, I’ve written:
- plays,
- nonfiction books, and
- essays.
Plays
I’ve written eight plays (six in verse), seven of which have been produced.
Prometheus Bound
In this play, I reimagine Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in modern verse. The play will eventually be the first act in an evening of theater that recreates Aeschylus’s lost Prometheus trilogy. From other ancient sources, we know the characters and basic plot line for his Prometheus Unbound, but only the title survives of the third play, Prometheus, the Fire-Bearer.
I hope to publish the trilogy when it is finished, so here I can only offer part of the opening scene.
Greek Myth One-Acts
These short plays were written for video production by my good friend Michael Frenchman as part of his VgrafLive Synthetic Science Theatre teleplays, which explore “the memes, themes, media and characters that have molded our culture and thoughts about Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Life.”
Pandora’s Bot presents five ancient Greek plays and myths that deal with hubris. Links and pages for these plays are in development.
- Prometheus (Forethought)—a shortened and adapted version of my Prometheus Unbound.
- Phaeton—the son of the sun god Helios talks dad into letting him drive the sun chariot, with catastrophic consequences.
- Pygmalion—a human sculptor brings a statue of Aphrodite to life with his love.
- Daedalus and Icarus—another son who gets cocky flying too close to the sun.
- Pandora’s Box—a coda to the series of plays, in which Hermes, Zeus’s herald, talks Pandora into opening that box, against the advice of Epimetheus (Afterthought), Prometheus’s brother.
Cassandra was written as an introduction and recurring chorus in VgrafLive’s production of Faustus.
Prose Plays
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus—This finished, full-length play is based on the book of the same title by L. Frank Baum. Yes, that L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books. This is not your childhood’s commercialized Santa Claus, but a wonderful “biography” of Claus from his abandonment as an infant on the edge of the Enchanted Forest, through his raising by a nymph among the immortals, and his ultimate immortalization by the immortals at the end of his life. The book’s prose is a bit turgid, but the story is great. This play has not been published or produced—yet.
Nonfiction books. I’m very far along with two books:
- How Long Will the Land Mourn? The Principles and Practice of Christian Earth Stewardship—a distillation of readings in Christian Earth Stewardship into ten essential principles, and a critique of their strengths and weaknesses.
- A Land-Based Gospel: The Economics and Politics, Community and Spirituality of the Jesus Movement—a new reading of the gospel of Jesus with a focus on earthcare, with chapters on Jesus’ teachings and activities regarding economics, politics, community life, healing and public health, plus an exploration of his own spiritual practice—where he went to do what, and why—and of his apocalyptic expectations, as all of these aspects of his ministry relate to our own times, culture, and care for our land bases.
- From Patriotism to Matriotism: A Bioregional Vision for Living in Our Homeland—a critique of patriotism as the cult of the fatherland, and an appeal for a renewed culture of place and our motherland.