I’ve been working hard over the past week trying to put the finishing touches on my latest full-length play – a morality tale called “The Secrets of the Magic Pool.”  It’s kind of an allegorical fairy-tale setting, but it’s not a fairy tale. Nor is it a fable. It is an allegory. Perhaps it’s best described as an allegorical tale – or a story of good and evil – or I have no idea how to classify it.

I’m planning on “workshopping” Act I of it next week with some actors in order to get some feedback before I put the finishing-finishing touches on it. I do plan on publishing it in the next month or so.

I must say that I have some mixed feelings about it. At times I feel like I’m being too heavy-handed with the overall themes of the play. There are plenty of light, whimsical scenes, but it does get kind of ominous and foreboding at times. I hope I haven’t tilted my hand too much on it.

At 18,000 words, I expect it to run around an hour forty-five minutes or so, certainly less than two hours. I’ve divided it into two acts, simply because I can never really see the point of making a play more than two acts. Two acts is simple – have the intermission in the middle. Of course, it needs to build to a satisfactory height come intermission, and I’ll let my actors tell me if I’ve accomplished that or not.

The play was actually finished last week until I got a new idea of how to make it better and I had to completely re-create the ending. Time spent is the price writers pay in order to improve a work, and it is much improved. The new ending gave me many more pieces which I could add to the earlier parts of the story too.

It’s one of these overlapping storylines which make it very difficult to write an accurate blurb or short synopsis.

• A foreign prince has to take a treasury run to the north before the king will let him marry his daughter.
• A widower cobbler frets about marrying off his girls, while discouraging his youngest from liking the annoying bread boy.
• A blind beggar sits on the street giving sage advice and strange narration.
• A mysterious woman hides herself in the woods, protecting a magical pool of water.
• A witch enlists the king’s outlaw brother to help her with her diabolical plot.

There’s probably other storylines as well. Lots going on, but it all comes together in the end.

It has a cast of 13 characters. Should be a lot of fun to produce. I plan on starting production in January for a May performance.

Now, back to novel writing.