My 15th year sales

When I decided to become a full-time writer two years ago, I'd hoped that the huge boost in writing time (from 1 1/2 hours a day to 4 hours a day) would pay off just as hugely in my royalties. Unfortunately, that didn't happen last year, when my royalties were up only 6% over the previous year.

Well, I'm happy to report that this year I finally saw the boost I've been waiting for. My royalties were up a whopping 35% while my productions were up the same percentage--from 451 to 608. I'm now making about 60% of my annual income from writing, and if I can somehow replicate that growth in each of the next two years, I'll be able to live solely on my royalties (and maybe take that trip to Europe!). 

Part of that boost came from having more plays published, of course. Last year at this time, I had 31 plays in print. Now I've got 35.

But more importantly, most of my older plays showed very little dropoff in the number of productions they received. Some even saw a small bump. And it was the best year ever for The Enchanted Bookshop Musical and Lights! Camera! Murder!, both of which have been out for seven years

This year, my plays have also appeared in four new countries, making for a total of 28 countries.

Now that we've dealt with that, let's jump into...

The top five

1) The Enchanted Bookshop--122 productions

Normally a play will peak in its first full year of publication, with its popularity waning in the subsequent years until it flattens out at a level about a half to a quarter of that.

Well, there's been very little waning for this incredibly popular play. After a record-setting 156 productions in the 2018-2019 season, The Enchanted Bookshop has snagged at least 100 productions each year since then (except for the two COVID years, of course). And the 122 productions it got this year is the second-best showing it's ever had. 

But that's not all. This year, The Enchanted Bookshop got me my 25th country when it was performed at a secondary school in Cyprus. And did I mention that it remains Pioneer's top-selling full-length play?

2) Bringing Down the House--68 productions

This extra-large comedy continues to surprise me. Last year, it managed to debut at number three on this list, garnering an impressive 36 productions in its first nine months of publication.

This year, it managed to snatch the number two spot. The 68 productions it got is more than any of my plays not titled The Enchanted Bookshop have ever gotten. And that's good enough to make Bringing Down the House Pioneer's fifth best-selling full-length play.

Reports from schools and theater companies confirm that it really does bring down the house wherever it plays. And one of those places was Maui OnStage in beautiful Wailuku, Hawaii, where it became my first staged production in the Aloha State (my only other Hawaiian credit was a COVID-era production of my virtual comedy You're Virtually Driving Me Crazy!). Aloha, indeed!

3) Freaky Tiki--62 productions

They say music is the universal language, but this play convinces me that farce is just as universal. In its first full year of production, this Hawaii-set comedy was performed in Japan (my 26th country), Portugal (my 27th country), Indonesia, and Canada.

I never expected this one to do so well, but maybe I should have. After all, it's another over-the-top comedy in the spirit of Million Dollar Meatballs and It's a Madhouse!, two plays which have done extremely well for me over the years.

But this one goes even more over the top than those, featuring an opera singer forced to communicate by clown horn, a tiki figure that magically disappears and reappears, and a chase scene involving a hot-headed French chef and a human-sized lobster. You might even learn a little Hawaiian from it.

4) The Worst Fairy Tale Ever--48 productions

Last year, I had a hunch that this one-act comedy--my first in ten years--was going to be big. Just a few weeks after it was published, more than one drama teacher (okay, two) wrote to tell me how excited their kids were to produce it.

Well, that excitement continued throughout the year, allowing The Worst Fairy Tale Ever to debut at number four on this list.

Of course, it helps that this is by far my easiest play to produce. It has a cast of just eight, no set except for a single stage cube, and no costumes other than an assortment of hats, making it perfect for cash-strapped schools and theaters.

It was inspired by the madcap comedies of London-based Mischief Theatre, including the megahits The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong. I even wanted to call it The Fairy Tale That Goes Wrong, but that idea was quickly squashed by my lawsuit-adverse publisher. Now, with the success of this play, I'm thing about launching my own series of everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong comedies. The Worst Murder Mystery Ever anyone?

5) The Enchanted Bookshop Musical and Too Many Ghosts--33 productions

For the first time ever, I have a tie in my top five list, this time between the musical version of The Enchanted Bookshop and my haunted house comedy.

I don't know why the musical popped up this year, but I'll take it. Especially since the show got me my 28th country with a youth theatre production in Trinidad and Tobago.

As for Too Many Ghosts, I couldn't be more thrilled. I love this play. Like really, really love it.

One reason is that it's my most cinematic play. Not only is it highly visual (some of the photos I've seen of the ghost effects have blown me away), but the script is plotted like a big-budget movie. If I hadn't failed so miserably trying to break into Hollywood several years ago, I'd be tempted to adapt it into a screenplay.

The other reason is that it includes a subplot unlike anything else I've written. I don't want to give it away here--you really owe it to yourself to read the script--but it's quite sad, and I hope that the play draws a few tears as well as laughs.

Feeling grateful

So, yeah, it's been a fantastic year, and I owe it all to you, the drama teachers and theatre directors who've produced my plays over the last twelve months. I can't thank you enough. But I'm definitely going to try. And what better way than with a great big colorful...

A Caribbean Enchanted Bookshop Musical

I'm beyond thrilled for my Trinidad and Tobago premiere today as the Native Caribbean Foundation opens a twelve-show run of The Enchanted Bookshop Musical. This makes my 25th country overall and my first in the Caribbean.

The Native Caribbean Foundation does a lot of work with marginalized communities, bringing the magic of theater to people who may not have experienced it before, and this production is no exception. One of the performances includes a sign language interpreter for deaf persons. Another is a relaxed performance for those with sensory sensitivities (think dimmer lights, lower mic volumes).

As president and CEO Marlon Espinoza put it in a recent Pioneer Drama Service newsletter article,  "I feel an immense amount of personal satisfaction and joy at being able to provide these children with a life-changing experience."

The best part? Both of these special performances are completely free for attendees.

 

I wish I had some stills to show you, but the foundation primarily relies on Facebook and Instagram reels, which I'm unable to copy here. Instead, I urge to go check out the wonderful work they're doing by visiting their Facebook page or Instagram page.

As for the theater, it's truly a beaut.

On leads, supporting characters, and robots

I got an interesting email today. A director in Illinois said their theater had produced The Enchanted Bookshop Musical and he wanted to submit a couple of the actors for their local theater awards. The problem is he didn't know which award to submit them for. Were Eddie and Fingers leads or supporting characters?

Now before we go any further, I want to clarify something. May people argue that the lead, or protagonist, is the character who demonstrates the greatest arc during the course of the story.

Social media, for example is rife with examples of people arguing that Cameron is the real hero in Ferris Bueller's Day Off because Ferris himself never changes. He's the exact same character at the end of the film that he was at the beginning.

Well, that's just silly. A well-designed play (or movie or novel) will feature several characters who demonstrate an arc. It makes the story more interesting. It makes the story more realistic. And it gives the actors something to sink their teeth into.

Does that make all of them the protagonist? Of course not.

The protagonist is simply the character who drives the plot. And a well-designed play (or movie or novel) will feature exactly one of them. It just makes for a more focused, more compelling story.

The Enchanted Bookshop is an interesting case, however, because it features not one, but two separate plots. There's the daytime plot, in which Margie struggles to keep her bookshop in business. And there's the nighttime plot, in which the book characters come to life to battle the smugglers.

Clearly, Margie is the protagonist of the daytime plot. But who's the protagonist of the nighttime plot? After all, the six main book characters who come to life all play a role in defeating the smugglers who threaten to destroy Margie's shop.

But if you read the script carefully, you'll see that it's Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz who acts as the conscience of the group. She's the one who continually urges the others to do the right thing.

So, no, Eddie and Fingers are not the leads of The Enchanted Bookshop. They're supporting characters. 

Sure, they have their own goals they're desperately trying to achieve. But those goals are not the main goals of the plot and are in direct opposition to our hero's goals, which makes them the antagonists. The bad guys, so to speak.

And that brings me to my final point. Just because a character isn't the lead, just because they have fewer lines than the main character, doesn't mean they're not important. 

As a matter of fact, every character in every one of my plays is important, even vital to the story. Seriously, I always plot my plays like a house of cards. Remove any one card--or character--and the whole thing comes crashing down. 

So rest assured, whether you have 331 lines like Jenkins in The Butler Did It! or 0 lines like the dancing robot who appears (and usually steals the show) at the end of  George Washington Ate My Homework, you have a very important role indeed.

Enjoy it. Savor it. And don't ever let yourself forget it.

Jacksonville PAC joins the club

This last Saturday was a big day for comic Martin Short as he was finally ushered into Saturday Night Live's Five-Timers Club, having hosted the show five times since 1986. 

My own Five-Timers Club, for schools and communities theaters who've done five productions of my plays, may not be nearly as famous, but I like to think the members are just as laudable as old Marty.

And the club now has a sixth member. My friends at the Jacksonville Performing Arts Company (that's the North Carolina Jacksonville, not the Florida one) just booked their fifth production of my plays.

What's crazy (and highly appreciated!) is that four of those productions were for The Enchanted Bookshop Musical. The theater company first produced it in March 2020, performed it again with two different youth groups in 2022, and are now about to start rehearsals for their 2025 production.

I guess they really like it!

The other production? That was for Whole Latte Love, a coffee shop comedy with its special blend of magic.

Maybe I should start ordering some Five-Timers club jackets?

Ontario Bookshop Musical makes the grade

  

I love those profiles TV stations do of small towns in their area. It's a great way to remind us that every town--no matter how small--has a wealth of things they can be proud of.

Milwaukee PBS made one for my own hometown of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin four years ago and it was fun to see what host John McGivern considered notable about it. Wayland Academy, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and the Beaver Dam Area Community Theatre are three that any proud Beaver would agree with (sadly, there was no mention of it being Fred MacMurray's hometown).

Well, apparently Smiths Falls, Ontario has plenty to be of proud of too, because this picturesque town on the Rideau River was recently profiled by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. And what they focused on was the town's historic train depot, originally built in 1912. Not only is it the home of the very cool Railway Museum but the Station Theatre, which is where the Smiths Falls Community Theatre performs.

And guess what play they're rehearsing right now? None other than The Enchanted Bookshop Musical (to see it, skip ahead 4:43 in the video above). Host Robyn Miller interviews a couple of volunteers and the young actress playing Margie, and it sounds like it's going to be a fantastic production. I already love the set!

The show runs August 16-25 so if you're in the area, be sure to check it out. This is one theatre company that's definitely on the right track (sorry!).

Crazy in the Great White North

One of the things I like best about being a playwright for the amateur market--mostly schools and community theaters--is the amazing places where you get to be produced.

If I wrote for professional markets, I'd get produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, maybe a few of the regional theater hubs like Minneapolis and Seattle. And that would be it.

Well, I've been produced in all of those cities. But I've also been produced in quaint little hamlets with fantastic names.

Like Farmers Branch, TX.

Soap Lake, WA.

Knysna, South Africa.

Angels Camp, CA.

Punxsatawney, PA (of groundhog fame).

Locust Grove, OK.

Soddy-Daisy, TN.

Marceline, MO (boyhood home of my childhood hero Walt Disney).

Sadly, I've never had a production in my own fantastically named hometown of Beaver Dam, WI. But if I ever do, you can bet you'll hear about it here.

Anyway, now I can add one more amazing place to the list. The school district in faraway Inuvik, Northwest Territories will be performing You're Driving Me Crazy! at the end of this month.

I find this fascinating for several reasons.

It's my first production in the Northwest Territories, leaving the Yukon as the only Canadian province-slash-territory where I haven't been produced.

It's my first production in the Arctic Circle.

It's also my furthest north production. Four years ago, I had posted about a production of The Enchanted Bookshop Musical at an elementary school in Iqaluit, Nunavut. That was pretty far north, but not nearly as north as this one.

Inuvik is so far north, it enjoys 56 days of 24-hour sunlight in the summer and 30 days of 24-hour darkness in the winter. The coldest temperature ever recorded there is -70 degrees F, although the average daily high is -9 degrees F in January and a balmy 67 degrees F in July.

The town has a population of 3137, predominantly Inuit. And it offers plenty of watery recreation as it's located on the enormous delta where the Mackenzie River empties in the Arctic Sea.

Unfortunately, I can't find any information about my particular production. That often happens when a school district rather than a particular school licenses the play. But I feel honored that they've selected You're Driving Me Crazy! and I wish the cast and crew broken legs all around.

Oh, and just for fun, I did a quick check to see where my other compass extremes have been. Here are those:

Southernmost Production: Eight--count 'em, eight!--different shows at my friend Gemma's wonderful performing arts school Standouts in Wellington, New Zealand.

Easternmost Production: How I Met Your Mummy at Te Puke High School in Te Puke, New Zealand--just 314 miles north and east of Wellington.

Westernmost Production: You're Virtually Driving Me Crazy! by Hana Arts in Hana, Hawaii (on the island of Maui).

Can you tell I'm a geography nerd?

Hong Kong Bookshop is picture perfect

All of my productions are special. But I have to admit, they're particularly special when they're the first to be done in that country.

That was the case yesterday, when Hong Kong 3 Arts Musical Institute performed The Enchanted Bookshop Musical, making China my 20th country.

This musical theater school went all out. It seems they spared no expense on the technical elements.

The set was elaborate and colorful, with fully constructed pieces and lots of interesting places for the action to play out. The costumes were just as colorful and completely authentic to each of the characters.

I've always said one of my main goals in this play was peopling it with characters that are instantly recognizable from their costumes. I think this school achieved that and more.

Of course, it's funny because these photos make it clear that they added several characters not in my original script: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Captain Hook (the latter as a replacement for Long John Silver?). I think I even see an Aladdin in the photo above--a first, as far as I know

And that's okay. As I've stated many times before, I encourage theater companies to add whatever literary characters they love. Alice of Wonderland fame has been very popular, as have other fairy tale characters such as Cinderella.

But what I like most about these photos are the dynamic poses and lively expressions on the faces of the actors. They're having a ton of fun, and you can feel it.

And did I mention that they translated the dialogue and lyrics into Cantonese?

Great job, everyone! You done me proud.

And to paraphrase another one of my favorite fictional characters, I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Peach State Bookshop gives it away

Another day. Another writeup.

This one comes from the august pages of the Valdosta Daily Times. The Gingerbread Players (love that name!), the youth arm of Theatre Guild Valdosta, is performing The Enchanted Bookshop Musical over the next two weekends. And, as the article makes clear, co-directors Pauline Player and Sandy Parrish and the rest of their crew have come up with a couple of clever twists.

One is that they built doors that are disguised as giant books on the bookshelves of the set, making it appear as though Dorothy Gale, Tom Sawyer, and the rest of the beloved literary characters appear by stepping directly out of their books. That's a great idea and kind of my original vision for the play, but I know how difficult it can be for cash-strapped schools and theater companies to build elaborate sets. I'm so glad Theatre Guild Valdosta was able to pull it off.

The other twist is more of a promotional one. In order to promote reading among its young audience, the theater will give a book to each child attending the performances. Now that's a fantastic idea!

Break legs, everyone! I hope you find all sorts of new young fans--and readers.

Tarheel Bookshop is music to my ears

Love seeing these talented kids working so hard as they rehearse for their upcoming production of The Enchanted Bookshop Musical. The group is the Jacksonville Performing Arts in North Carolina. The song is "What's Inside?", a catchy little number that Dorothy Gale, Tom Sawyer, and the rest of the literary characters sing after discovering a mysterious book with a hidden compartment.

If you want to know what's inside that book--or you're eager to hear more great songs from my partner in rhyme Stephen Murray--be sure to visit the musical's web page. One-minute clips from all the show's songs can be accessed from that page and are free to listen to.

The show itself runs March 11-12. Hearing how good the kids sound already, I'm sure it'll be a huge hit.

Much more than that groundhog was today.

Evergreen Bookshop hits the silver(ish) screen

 

Most schools are socially distancing their theatrical productions these days, with students performing in masks and/or recording their performances for posting online. In doing so, they've shown a lot of determination, resourcefulness and creativity, and they all deserve major props for their efforts.

I especially love a recent production I came across from the Evergreen State. Lakes High School in beautiful Lakewood, WA went above and beyond the norm by filming their production like a movie, with professional-quality editing and very cool digital backgrounds. And the performances are so dynamic, you almost forget that the actors are wearing masks. I especially like the in-book credits at the end.

You can check it out above. And if you have your own production you'd like me to highlight, please send me an email. I look forward to seeing it! 

Around the world in sixteen plays

Oakhill School, Knysna, South Africa

While we're on the subject, Valentine's Day was a great day for another reason as well. I learned that Oakhill School in Knysna, South Africa will produce Babka Without Borders in July. This represents my sixteenth country and my very first production on the continent of Africa.

I have just two more continents to reach: South America and Antarctica. Don't laugh. Turns out the scientists at McMurdo Station have an amateur theater group, although if you want them to perform your plays, it helps if you already work there.

If that wasn't enough, I found out yesterday that the Bangalore School of Speech and Drama would be performing The Enchanted Bookshop Musical that same month. That makes India my seventeenth country--roughly one country for each of my sixteen plays.

I love both of these plays, but I'm especially grateful that kids have taken to The Enchanted Bookshop Musical so quickly. I'm sure the main characters of Dorothy, Tom Sawyer and Pollyanna are grateful too. After all, they get to come to life again, not just within the confines of my fictional bookshop, but on the stages of schools and theater companies all over the world.

What could be better than that?

The gifted students of the Bangalore School of Speech and Drama

How do you love your books?

I came across an article the other day that really got me thinking. Written by Anne Fadiman, it was published 25 years ago in Civilization magazine, but it was reprinted by Slate this week in response to a tweet that raised the hackles of book lovers everywhere.

In the tweet, the tweeter (twitterer?) posted a picture of a book he cut in half in order to make it easier to lug on trips.

Here is that photo, and if you're an avid book lover, you may want to sit down for this (graphic image follows):

Horrifying, I know. But Fadiman had something to say about it. In her article, titled "Never Do That to a Book", she proposed there are two ways to love your books.

First, there's the courtly way, in which the reader takes pristine care of their texts, refusing to tear them, write on them or even dogear a single page.

The other way is the carnal way. Disciples of this school (and that includes Fadiman herself) don't just read books, they consume them--and in the most literal sense possible. They scribble in the margins, throw away pages as they finish them, even--horror of horrors!--set them down spine side up.

A sign of disrespect? Not at all. Says Fadiman:

"To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy."

I have to admit, I've abused my share of books..When I was a kid, my dad had a collection of elegantly embossed hardcovers called the Twenty Greatest Works of Literature or something like that. He kept them out of reach on a high shelf in our rec room, but when I saw that one of them had the intoxicating title of--wait for it!--Treasure Island--I knew I had to read it.

I climbed up on a chair, grabbed the book off the shelf and, for the rest of that summer, took it everywhere I went. Church. Summer school. Camping. Fishing.

I loved that book, and when I finally returned it to its shelf a couple months later, it stood out from the rest of the books in its sheer usedness. The cover was faded. The corners were bumped. The edges were threadbare. And I think it got some fairly significant water damage from that fishing trip.

Sure, it was ugly. But it was the only book from that collection that ever got read.

Anyone who has seen or performed in my play The Enchanted Bookshop knows that Miss Margie, the owner of the ship, belongs firmly in the courtly camp. She scolds the bad guys, Eddie and Fingers, when they toss her books on the floor. And so, when it comes time for them to punish her, they know how to make it hurt:

EDDIE: This ain't the necklace we was looking for. What happened to the real necklace?

MARGIE: I don't know! I never had it!

EDDIE: Tryin' to pull a fast one, are ya? Well, we'll see about that. Fingers?

FINGERS: What books should I start with?

EDDIE: I don't care. Just pick one.

FINGERS: (Grabs a real book from the shelf.) How about Mary Poppins?

EDDIE: Whatever. (FINGERS tears pages out of the book.)

MARGIE: No! Stop!

EDDIE: Are you gonna tell us where the real necklace is?

MARGIE: I already told you! I don't know where it is!

EDDIE: All right, Fingers. Pick another book.

FINGERS: (Grabs another book.) This one's got a funny name. Don Quicksoddy. (Tears pages out of the book.)

MARGIE: Stop! I'll give you all my money! Just please don't hurt my books!

You know, it's funny. I've seen dozens of productions of this play--both live and on video--and not a single one had the bad guys actually tear the pages from the book. They usually just mime the tearing, or toss the books gently on the floor without tearing them all.

I get it. My plays are primarily directed by teachers and I suspect that most teachers are lifelong members of Team Courtly. I mean, they have to be. The books in their rooms get handled by dozens of hands a year, and if they didn't enforce some level of care, within a couple years, there wouldn't be any books left.

In my play, however, I think it's really important to damage the books. It has to be visceral. The audience should feel the tearing of the pages like a gut punch, and in that way, they'll realize how precious books are.

But what if you really, really don't want to damage any books? Well, there is one way around it. Stick some loose pages inside the books ahead of time, then when it comes times to destroy them, pull out those pages and toss them on the floor. The audience will never know it was faked.

Or maybe you can talk your local library into donating some damaged books that are otherwise headed for the recycler.

These days, I take better care of my books. Maybe it's a result of getting older, but my current view is that we never really own our books. We just borrow them. The best of our books will last much longer than we do, and we owe it to those who follow to leave at least a few of the literary treasures we loved so much.

But those trashy little paperbacks? Do what you want with them.

I won't tell Margie.

The playwright speaks

I've never really liked my voice. The few times I could bring myself to listen to a recording, I thought I sounded like a teddy bear. With an upper respiratory infection.

That's no exaggeration. Several years ago, after leaving a voice message for one of my co-workers, that co-worker asked me never to do that again. Apparently, listening to my voice hurt his ears too much.

But that shouldn't stop you from listening to it. And now you can. Pioneer Drama Service has just launched a new promotional tool called Pioneer Pods.

The concept is simple. They start with an audio interview with their playwrights, asking them questions like what was their inspiration for the play, what kind of message are they trying to convey? You know, the usual stuff. They then take these answers and intercut them with dialogue from an actual production of the play.

I think it's a great idea. Directors get to hear directly from the playwright what makes the play unique. And the dialogue gives them a feel for some of the characters and what play sounds like on its feet.

Pioneer invited me to do two--one for The Enchanted Bookshop and one for The Enchanted Bookshop Musical--and Adam, who puts the audio files together for Pioneer, did a wonderful job on them.

Want to check them out for yourself? They're easy to find, situated front and center on the web page for each play. You'll find the page for The Enchanted Bookshop here and the page for The Enchanted Bookshop Musical here.

I hope you enjoy listening to them!

I know I won't.

The Enchanted Bookshop Musical comes to life

Let me tell you, publishing a musical has been quite the educational experience. And one of the things I've learned is this: It takes a whole lot longer to rehearse and mount a musical than a play (well, duh).

My play The Enchanted Bookshop was first published in July 2017 and premiered on September 21. Think about that. A script wasn't even available until July 31, so the group that first produced it--The Orange County Players of Paoli, IN--had to do all of the following in just seven weeks:

• Order a perusal script
• Read the script
• Decide to perform it,
• Pay the licensing fee
• Order performance scripts for the entire cast
• Hold auditions
• Cast the play
• Build the sets and costumes
• Run a full set of rehearsals from first read-through to final dress 

That's pretty impressive.

Musicals, however, need a lot more time. The Enchanted Bookshop Musical came out in July of this year, and it's just now getting its first productions.

And that's okay. Learning the lyrics probably takes a month of rehearsal time. Add choreography, and you've just extended it another month.

Now that the show has had its premiere, other theaters are jumping on the bandwagon. In fact, the musical currently has 27 productions booked for the current school year.

That's a very healthy start. It's not as many productions as the original play got in its first few months of publication, but it's a whole lot more than any of my other plays. So it looks like the musical is going to be a hit as well.

So who gave The Enchanted Bookshop Musical its world premiere? Well, it turned out to be the Arbor Court Anderson Valley Entertainment Center of Lancaster, CA. They haven't posted any photos from their production, however, so I was excited this week when I saw that the second group to perform the musical--Haystack Productions of Beausejour, Manitoba--posted some of theirs.

Of course, the photos don't look any different than the photos from the play (other than the open mouths during the musical numbers!). And that's because the play and the musical have the exact same characters, the same costumes, the same sets.

In fact, all of the dialogue and stage directions from the original script were used as is in the musical. The only change were the eleven songs that were added.

Looking at the photos now, the one thing that really strikes me is the distinctiveness of the costumes. 

When I was first choosing the literary characters that would appear in The Enchanted Bookshop, one of my criteria was to only include characters that are instantly recognizable from their costumes. I didn't want the audience getting distracted trying to figure out who was who. That's why there's no Anne of Green Gables or Caddie Woodlawn in the play (though I really, really wanted to include a Canadian character).

Anyway, as the photo at the top of this post shows, I think I was successful--at least with the guys. The girls, on the other hand, pose a bigger challenge.

We all recognize Dorothy Gale's blue-checked gingham dress, of course (Fun fact: While the ruby slippers were invented for the 1939 MGM film, her iconic clothing came right out of L. Frank Baum's book). But the other two characters are a little harder to place. Need help? That's Pollyanna in the middle and Heidi on the right.

I think the problem is that our image of the six main characters is shaped not by the original books they appeared in but by the movie adaptations of those books, and there hasn't been a movie version of Pollyanna or Heidi in decades. Besides, even when those characters did appear on screen, there wasn't one definitive outfit they were identified with.

Let's face it, male movie heroes don't change their clothes as often as female movie heroes.

Anyway, I love the costumes here. They're very colorful and true to character, so once you're introduced to the characters wearing them, you shouldn't have any trouble keeping them straight. And that's really what's most important here.

So a great big kudos to the costumer designer, the skilled seamstresses and seamsters (?) who made the costumes, and everyone else involved in the production.

You can be proud. Very, very proud.

Set ideas for The Enchanted Bookshop

It looks like The Enchanted Bookshop is going to have another bang-up year. It's already booked 69 productions for the new school year, and there are several more months still to go.

Many of those productions are in their planning stages, so I thought this would be a good time to share some of the photos I've found from earlier productions. This time I'll focus on the set.

One of the best things about The Enchanted Bookshop is that it used a single set, and the requirements are really quite simple. In fact, the script lists only four must haves: a counter, a small bookcase, a cat bed and a shop sign. In this play, you won't be needing any doors, windows, or furniture.

But you can use doors if you want to:

Fort Stockton, TX

A comfy chair can be nice too:

South Saint Paul, MN

As for the sign, I like the old-timey look of this one:

West Pawlet, VT

Or you can paint one right on the counter:

Huntingdon Valley, PA

Some theaters are happy with just a bookcase or two:

Carroll, IA

While others go nuts:

Seaside, OR

Still others build a whole wall out of them:

Thornton, CO

Some even paint books on the flats:

Spokane, WA

Using book covers as posters is a great idea:

Medford, OR

You can also use oversized books as set pieces:

Aberdeen, WA

Or one really big book for the book characters to enter from:

Pearl, MS

The grandfather clock and fireplace here add a homey touch:

Kearney, NE

While this backdrop lends a more elegant air:

Eudora, KS

I really like this colorful, circus-like set:

Clarksville, IN

And the mimimalist, almost dreamlike quality of this set is quite striking.

Thunder Bay, ON

These are just a few of the sets I've found online. If you're proud of yours (and why wouldn't you be?), email it to me and I'll add it here.

By the way, The Enchanted Bookshop Musical has the exact same set as the play, so you can use the designs shown here for that show too.

Bookshop musical goes north -- really north!

My plays have been performed in some exotic locations: Panama, The Philippines, Abu Dhabi. But even I was surprised to see where the first group to book The Enchanted Bookshop Musical was located: Iqaluit in Nunavut, Canada.

The mostly Inuit community has a population of 7700 and serves as the capital of the territory. Situated on the west coast of Baffin Island, it's locked in by ice for much of the year but features a modern airport that keeps it connected to the rest of the country all year long.

The musical is going be performed in May by Nakasuk Elementary School, shown in the photo below.

Break legs, everybody! I hope you have a ton of fun with it.

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