Summer Play Festival
Playwrights Blog

Have to do this quick because I´m at an internet cafe. Bielefeld is beautiful and crisp, a village of about 300,000 perched in low hills 3 hours West of Berlin. They have a state theater here. (Every village has one) Theatre Bielefeld has a budget somewhere in the 19 million range. I´m not a money person, but am told the budget´s about as much as the Met opera. Let´s repeat… and they have one of these joints in EVERY TOWN. It is amazing how art is woven into the fabric of the community here. Meanwhile, still they have local folks doing fundraising to cover events like our festival, who threw us a fabulous dinner on Tuesday, wined and dined us, made us guess what vegetable was in the soup, (white carrots), and all in English, as only two of the Americans here have any passing knowledge of German. I´m told that a lot of the content of my play is going to get lost in translation… the magic realism, the Civil War subplot and all the Southernisms, although the actor playing Jacob told me that the peer-group divisions that separate Slaughter and Chesnutt (her a reject & him a jock, the across-the-tracks love story) are totally universal, recognizable, and seen among German young people all the time. My director thought that Chickenscratch (which is just a guy´s name) was supposed to wear a chicken suit. It´s kind of German style to impose that kind of severe image onto a script, although I find it somewhat alarming. We´re still talking that one out… All a whirlwind. Jetlag. I learned the words for love and freedom yesterday but cannot spell them.



Staged reading of Grunes Madchen (Green Girl).



Poster for the festival on a column on a Bielefeld street.

Hi Sarah,

It’s been a pleasure meeting you there in Bielefeld, and it looks like you had a great time. Too bad I didn’t see your play.

Best -

Henning

It took me nearly twenty years to learn that If you are bound by sin, you are bound to suffer. I was bound to alcohol, marijuana (how long does marijuana stay in your system), nicotine (how long does nicotine stay in blood), cocaine (how long does cocaine stay in system) and you name it. After two failed marriages, the death of my daughter, and a continued battle with drugs and alcohol I finally realized I needed help. That help came when a friend invited me to his church. The pastors message was on ‘Spiritual Grammar’ He said, ‘Don’t ever put a period where God has put a comma and never put a comma where God has placed a period. When God puts a period at the end of your past, He picks up His pen and starts writing a new chapter.’ I accepted Jesus that day six years ago, and my life is totally changed