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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The Chamberlain's Man


I'm making what I hope is the final change in the lineup of "Next in the Series." I'm going to replace "The Political Thing" with an adaptation of a play I wrote many years ago called "The Chamberlain's Man."

"The Chamberlain's Man" is an out-and-out farce that has William Shakespeare as its central character. Although at the time of compostion I had thought him kind of a variation on the character Bob Hope played in movies like "My Favorite Brunette" and "Casanova's Night Out," I realized last week that he was really much more like Basil Fawlty. I intend to go forward with this idea in this revision.

I'm postponing work on "The Political Thing" simply because I think the story is going to need more than three episodes to tell properly. It could need half-a-dozen or more. And so it made sense to push it to the second season, where there will be plenty of room for something that big.

As for "The Chamberlain's Man," it's just long enough for three episodes, and really just calls for some polishing of what was a juvenile work. I'm taking as its credo a quote from John and Yoko: "All artists are con artists."

On a related creative note for the few who care, I've started marking up the printed out pages of "Michael Drayton, Detective Guy" so that I can retype and rewrite them. With any luck, I'll be able to push right through and finish it sometime this fall.

In the meantime, fight the power.

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