Author Notes

Thanks for coming out to see my plays. I appreciate it. Ever since I first came to Valdez in 1995 for the 3rd Theatre Conference, this town has had a special place in my heart, and putting my shows on here is special to me.

Bile in the Afterlife’s staged reading at the Conference, where it won an award, marked a turning point for me in my writing. It was the first play that I felt honestly proud of... it was funny, but more than that, it has something to say about the way people relate to God and divinity, issues that are very close to me. Finding my personal relationship with the almighty is the most personally significant event of my life. Bile represents all that I find hubristic about humanity’s condescension to God.

The play’s lead character, Bile, was such a rich character that I ended up telling two other earlier stories from his life. Living with the Savage is the final piece of this trilogy, though it comes sequentially first in his life, and is one of my most personal plays. It chronicles an event that many people can relate to: the addition of a stepfather to a tightly knit family, and the conflict that invariably arises. While my stepfather Ted and I have become friends, those first couple of years were rocky, to say the least, and are chronicled in this play.

Ideally, the Bile in Bile in the Afterlife would be thirty years older than in Living with the Savage. But this department is about students, and Adam Warwas earned the role in auditions. So just imagine, if you will, that he’s in his fifties!

As always, thanks to Renee Ernster, my seamstress goddess, and Second Time Around for their donations of costumes.