dramatist and player   murder on the page, magic on the stage is this the price I pay to make a play Solitude is all you start with, and rage, sick silent rage, and a trunkload of stray junk, and the heart’s fierce longing for a past unwatered by grief. Get it all down: bleed drama from your visions and then at last into show — and when you have it right we know. Tear the script out, surrender to it: once you’ve seen your story, words transmute your mettle like sperm transmutes egg, inward lit, and once you have shown us our lines they’re ours. kabuki and passion and kyries into the fire I go with my plays     © Michael Fleming Cazadero, California August 1998