"Of course the question that I have is, what prompted you to write the
play in the first place?"

Sigh....

I was 18 years old. I'd had about 5 or 6 one-act plays produced at
Southwestern College, to generally good reviews. (I really hate to use
the term, but I was kind of a prodigy in some ways.) Anyway, one day, the
head of the theater department pulled me aside and said, "Look, every
summer we do a summer stock production that runs about 12-16 weeks,
usually for younger audiences. Most of the time they're established
plays, but sometimes we do an original if we see potential. I'd love to
see what you could do with something like the Snow White story. And we
can afford to pay a reasonable fee for it."

Understand...this was the first time I'd been *commissioned* to write a
full length play. I was somewhat conflicted about the whole thing, most
of the plays I'd done had been either offbeat comedies or these terribly
indulgent and self-impressed treatises which will never, ever be seen by
anyone again (I have the only recordings of them), and this was about as
far away from that as you could get. But it was the chance to have a
long-running summer-stock production, and at 18, fresh out of high
school...I fell for it.

After it ran for that year, I sent the script off to a play publisher,
figuring they'd turn it down, but not wanting to waste it...and they
picked it up. And it's still there. And every six months, I get these
royalty statements showing that it's being performed all over the
planet...from the US to Singapore, Thailand, once from Burma,
Germany...urk....

It was intended for kids...and ONLY kids. So when adults go see it,
knowing my current work...I just blanch, that's all.


jms