“Edward Coles: From Boy To Man” is currently in development. Draft #03 will have a public reading on Zoom by Merely Writers on July 24 at 7:30pm. If you are intererested in viewing, please let me know where to send the Zoom info by clicking HERE.

Draft #03 is possible thanks to the August 8, 2022 Kentucky Playwrights Workshop’s Zoom reading of completed Draft #02. The actors were awesome, giving me nuanced interpretations of lines, that I’d not previously considered. And their contributions to the feedback discussion were most valuable. Their information about the time’s value of writing paper, coupled with an additional research resource were icing on the cake, propelling me into a veritable sugar rush of rewrites. Thank you, Kentucky Playwrights Workshop!

Draft #01, “Edward Coles: The Man Who Freed Illinois” was a 3 act play that attempted to cover 54 years of Edward Coles’ life, from him leaving the College of William and Mary without a degree, due to his father’s impending death to Edward’s own son, Captain Robert Coles death in battle in Roanoke Virginia as a Confederate soldier on February 7, 1862. Merely Writers January 2022 reading made it perfectly clear, thanks to the actors’ voices both as readers and contributors in the post reading discussion, that too much action was being talked about by the characters and too little action shown. And that play’s 3 acts could become a 3 play trilogy, whose actions span 61 years to Edward’s death on July 7, 1868

And thus play 1 of 3, “Edward Coles: From Boy To Man,” was born, read on Zoom by Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, that helped me improve it for the upcoming July 24 Zoom reading by Merely Writers. July’s reading will help me continue to improve and ready it for an October/November workshop with public, staged reading that’s now being planned.

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