Quaker plays for zoom

 

OK listen up here. I'm a Quaker play writer; I am about halfway through my second book. One of the plays in it is here; I just put it there today. This is perhaps the fifth play in what will ultimately be a book of about a dozen. As you can tell, it's not too long or too difficult. It's very pertinent to today because George Wallace Jr. was a polarizing figure much like our present president. And it took all Quaker tolerance could muster to allow him into one's world.

The reason I point this out here is not so much blatant self-promotion (there is room for that elsewhere, but because I think zoom is the perfect place for drama. I think we could invite people up to a zoom, have a drama prepared, have a powerpoint or set of pictures for the set, and go with it.

The secret would be that the play would have to have relatively little in the way of true action, or props, or such things that constitute normal dramas. It would have to be heavy on words, light on true interactive behavior.

I'm not saying that this is the best of the plays in the new set, or the least interactive of them. Some of them would be better suited to zoom than others. But if anyone is interested in pursuing it, this would be a good place to start, and I should say that since this is my own Quaker site, lots of plays from the first volume are at this site too.

In short, I use history to demonstrate Quaker values, and this can be done to teach young adults, or just for an adult's general edification. History itself is a kind of teacher, and allows us to see our modern day in its own light, in a slightly different light.

My newest play is about the Pawnee, and about Quaker attempts, through the years, to keep involvement in the Native American community. I am not sure if all these plays will end up on that site, but some will (see this one on Hoover, just a little earlier). I will do Nixon soon - it is a running issue whether he can be considered a Quaker or not (in fact, he was brought up as an Evangelical Friend, in Whittier meeting, CA, but never claimed to be a Quaker or to base decisions of his presidency on his Quaker background). It is the kind of issue that deserves careful treatment. But it's also the kind of thing that people are interested in, that teach us a little about Quakerism in the modern day.

IF you are interested in the possibility of putting one or more of these plays on zoom, let me know. By the way I have always given them away free to people who actually use them, for Yearly Meetings or whatever, and would be glad to provide scripts that you could use to perform them. I would also love to see them. When I publish them I give profits to charity (or in this case Cloud Quakers) and it never amounts to more than a few bucks. In short, there isn't much profit in producing Quaker plays. But I think that this zoom era will be marked by a revival of plays or dramas that can be viewed from home. Though I know that some areas are becoming majority-vaccinated, and already looking forward to "return to normal," whatever that is, I myself feel that zoom will become steadily more integrated into people's ways, especially since the world, armed to the teeth as it is, is looking for ways to be entertained and educated at home, out of the maddening crowds. It's just a step in our process of using the tools at hand in the best possible way. And I think zoom plays can very easily be a thing, a thing Quakers can use to explore our values.