(This essay, written by Duane Kelly, was originally published July, 2023 by AdamSmithWorks as part of its Speaking of Smith series. Reprinted by permission. Photo is of Kelly at Adam Smith's grave in Edinburgh in 2022.)While travelling in Denmark some years back, I spent an afternoon indulging my passion for theatre by visiting Elsinore Castle. For those rusty on their Shakespeare, Elsinore was home to a certain melancholy prince who had trouble making up his mind. The castle is indeed real; Shakespeare did not have to make it up. The plot – a prince agonizing over the murder of his father the ..read more

Last month The New Yorker magazine sent a decree throughout the land that my cartoon caption for its August 29 contest was one of three finalists. I guess the sheer brilliance of “Try using a different can” could not be denied. Hoorah, hoorah!  I have long used the weekly magazine’s caption contest as a comic writing exercise, low-impact training for my scriptwriting. A play can always use one more laugh. My caption achieving finalist status got me thinking about luck and artistic success – a marriage I frequently interrogate. When The New Yorker’s cartoon department informed me I was a f ..read more

British playwright Tom Stoppard, 85 years old and still working, has long been a hero to me. I would go so far as to declare him our finest living playwright. Leopoldstadt, his latest play, opened in London’s West End in 2020 only to be shuttered by Covid. I read the script as soon as it was published and thought it was brilliant. Twenty-six actors perform 37 roles, a cast size more typical of a movie than a play. Last year the remounted play had a successful London run. When I heard that the acclaimed London production would be crossing the Atlantic this fall for a Broadway engagement, I chec ..read more

I find myself at a high-water mark in my theatre life. My play Visiting Cezanne is now on as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest theatre festival. I have taken up residence in this lovely city for the entire month of August.  After being pretty much dormant for the past three years due to the Covid pandemic, the Festival has risen to its feet again. This production of Cezanne, in the works for two and a half Covid-delayed years, is a collaboration with a sterling group of theatre artists in Glasgow.   We close on August 28, after 22 performances. Audience ..read more

(from an essay first published October, 2017; photo of George Souvall by Bella Souvall)  Youth who find themselves in challenging circumstances can sometimes catch a break. The fates drop into their path a gift in the guise of a good and caring adult. The opposite can just as easily happen, kicking one’s life from bad to worse. I was one of the lucky ones.  My gift went by the name of George Souvall.  In 1965 came my summer horribilis. I was 15, my father died in the U.S. Navy at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, my beloved grandmother Bessie had a fatal stroke while I was staying w ..read more

A hearty thank-you to all the impassioned staff and volunteers at Burien Actors Theatre! That company’s 2018-19 season just closed out with a four-week run of my play Visiting Cezanne. Attendance was strong with audience response warm and enthusiastic. It is a harsh truth of theatre that a play is not a fully realized work of art until it is offered on stage to an audience. The script is just the blueprint on which a building is erected. I have been fortunate. Below are images from the lovely Burien production (all photos by Michael Brunk). Paul Cezanne (Ken Holmes) uses his gardene ..read more

My play Visiting Cezanne opens February 15 for a one-month run at Burien Actors Theatre in south Seattle. If you’re in the area I hope you can attend. The play had its premiere one year ago in Seattle. Visiting Cezanne tells the story of unknown painter Nora Baker who, by the magic in a paintbrush, is whisked from 2016 New York to 1900 France and the studio of Paul Cezanne, another obscure painter with his own problems. Nora desperately wants to get back to 2016 but Monsieur Cezanne is not being helpful. Cezanne and Nora explore what keeps an artist going when the world’s indifference mak ..read more

The world premiere of my play Patrimony opens in Seattle May 5, 2022 for eight performances. If you’re in the neighborhood we’d love to see you at the theater.   Patrimony, a new play whose secrets never seem to end, tells the story of a troubled teenager with no father who struggles to find one. Terrified, his mother doesn’t know where to turn. The boy tries to enlist the help of his imaginary friend from childhood. But even if this creature can be located, what aid could he possibly offer?  We have a magnificent creative team, led by director Alma Davenport. Our actors have ..read more

Can you remember when you first heard Darth Vader say the words to Luke: “I am your father.” How did you feel? A measure of success for many stories is whether they present a major reveal toward the end that is both inevitable and surprising. When a story hits both those marks, readers and viewers experience a deeply satisfying feeling. Our minds also immediately race back over the story to revisit the clues that were there all along but whose significance we failed to grasp. This has been going on for a long time. Our ancient ancestors felt that same story-listening thrill when ..read more

  Having grown up in a large Mormon family, I can bear testimony (as a good Mormon might put it on a Sunday) that advising a teenager not to attend Brigham Young University because the socialist professors there will corrupt you, would be exceedingly rare. Yet that incident ranks low on the strangeness scale for one survivalist family in southern rural Idaho. That family was escorted onto the world’s literary stage last year by Educated, a memoir written by Tara Westover, youngest of the family’s seven children. I attended an interview with Westover last spring at Elliott Bay Books in Sea ..read more