I’m Backkkkkkkkkk…

After some time away to work up my play, Checkmate, I’m getting back to my blog. Hopefully the world hasn’t forgotten about me. The play is a reckoning in a transracial family. It’s based on my family’s experience, though not a carbon copy of it. Hopefully it will mirror the contradictions and achievements of transracial adoption in our country.

In reading, it was overpoweringly obvious how much things have not changed since my wife and I adopted our kids back in the 1970s, It has been extremely hard to write because it comes from such a deep place within me. But that’s particularly why I had to write it. It’s not done, but it’s at a stage where I’m sick of working on it and could feel comfortable letting it outside to play with actors.

I haven’t casted in some time. I’m needing a black actor to read the part of a 47-year old man adopted by white parents. One prospect said he couldn’t commit to doing it, so I’m going down my list of friends in hopes they might recommend one. Another black actor I knew, I can’t remember his name.

When I told my friends what I was looking for, I first said I was looking for a black, male actor to read a part in my play. Then I realized that was rather ham-handed and too commodity-like, so I’ve reconfigured my request to read something like I was looking for a black actor to read the part of a 47-year old black man who had been adopted by white parents. Also to include when the play is to be read, that the play is about reckoning in a transracial family, and that one reader called it a “fresh approach to a difficult problem.” I think it’s more than that, but I think that statement will play well as a complement.

More later…