This is how my plays are written.

I was feeling pretty down today and not at all like writing but I opened the laptop and looked at some of my works in progress. I usually have three or four things working, so I don’t get bored with any one in particular.

I happened to open a one-act play I have been working on, thinking I would just see how far I had gotten the last time. I read the last line I had written and thought of a line in response. Then I thought, well, I better write that one down at least, or I will forget it. So I wrote it down. Then I thought of a response to that line, and I thought, well, I better write that down at least, or I will forget it. Ten pages, later I finally couldn’t think of a response, so I stopped.

This is the kind of in-depth planning characteristic of my work.

"And therefore sit you down in gentleness 
And take upon command what help we have
That to your wanting may be minister'd."
As You Like It

Almost 25 years ago, I adapted and directed a production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre. It became one of my most fulfilling and enjoyable theater experiences. Thank you to ASGT and the wonderful and talented cast, crew, and production staff who joined this journey to the forest of Arden.

I recently came across my notes for the script. It brought back so many great memories that I decided to publish this adaptation. 

As You Like It is in the public domain of course. This adaptation, set entirely in the forest of Arden and compressed from five acts to two, may be presented on the stage royalty-free (including the set design, prologue, and stage directions).

A couple of years ago in London, I saw the play  #aiww The Arrest of Ai Weiweiby, by Howard Brenton, at the Hampstead Theatre.

The play is about the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who was arrested by the Chinese authorities at Beijing airport on April 3rd, 2011 as he was about to board a flight to Taipei. Ai Weiwei spent 81 days in detention without trial. He was accused of being a subversive, a conman and a pervert, who “could damage state security.”

Edward Hall the artistic director of Hampstead Theatre explains his choice of this special topic in the program notes: ”We had been looking for a play about China since starting in Hampstead and knew that it was a subject that Howard Brenton was keen to explore. The rise of China is clearly one of the most important developments of modern times but it has hardly been discussed.”

The arrest and the disappearance, without trial, of the artist reveals a lot about  oppression in China today, and potentially could have brought about an exciting and critical play about its development. 

Please keep reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-human-face-of-a-conflict-selim-selim/

Historically, playwrights are too often judged by the complexity of their characters, not the excellence of their plays. But this is a literary judgment, not a dramatic one.