The Odyssey

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One of the nicest things about being a writer is being commissioned to write something. I know some authors kick a little against deadlines and external expectations, but my experience in Advertising has taught me that some of my best work gets done that way. Originally I had about three months to adapt Homer’s story . . . but then real life kicked in and the production got delayed and then people changed jobs and suddenly I had no idea if it would ever get produced or how.

Adapting a book for the stage is tricky. Adapting a classic is doubly so. You want to be faithful, you want to translate the story into the theatrical, you want to enhance the experience . . . you desperately do not want to screw it up.

Overall, I’m very pleased at how well this script turned out. And I’m very grateful that the director who originally commissioned it — the most excellent Bob Hubbard at Northwestern College — thought enough of my work to ask me to take a shot at it.

Drawing Away

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This script has the dubious distinction of being the newest thing I’ve written as well as the oldest.

Let me explain… The idea behind this story goes back to my days in junior high, but I don’t think we should hold that against it. It’s a nice, Twilight Zone kind of idea and it stuck with me for a long time. When I first began writing plays in college, the concept served as the engine for my first script and, over all, it worked fairly well — at least, as long as I give that wobbly kneed infantile wannabe playwright some serious slack. But, overall, the play worked.

A few years back I had a story in my head about a single dad and his daughter, something about the way we take care of the people we love no matter what. At some point or other, this story collided in my head with that first play I wrote way back when and I realized that it might just make sense.

Turns out, I was right.

The Red Boy

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A few years back I had a conversation with the artistic director of a children’s theatre. We were talking about how most plays for children are tepid fluff and that kids deserve better than what they are getting. This play started with that conversation.

I’m told that David Mamet has said that the one thing that an audience will not forgive is the death of a child on stage. In 2001, this play was selected as a top ten finalist in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. So maybe Mamet was wrong.

Alice in Wonderland

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I know what you’re thinking — and no, I’m not taking credit for Lewis Carroll’s classic story. I can, however, take credit for writing a fairly faithful theatrical adaptation of it. This dark and funny script has been produced a number of times by children’s theatres around the country. Despite this, I’ve never seen a production of it.

The Snare

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This play was awarded Best new Play in 1996 by Playhouse On The Square in Memphis, Tennessee. They were kind enough to produce it as well. It was the first time that someone who didn’t know me wanted to produce one of my scripts. They paid me for it and it felt better than anything to hold that check in my hands.

There’s lots of true things in this script but, most importantly, Buster Keaton was Harry Houdini’s godson and he did spend some time in a Mexican sanitarium “taking the cure.”

The starting point for this script came from a passage in Rudi Blesh’s excellent biography of Keaton and I’m very grateful for it.



If you would like to know more about T.M. Camp’s work, feel free to contact him directly. He’s really quite nice.