I had grown weary of sending out my play scripts in the mail to various theaters and contests, and then getting rejected or getting no response back at all. A few times I would get a note of encouragement. The  only times I had gotten plays produced in the past was through my friendships with local theatre people or writers - so when I read an article in The Dramatist monthly magazine - an article about the mechanics and benefits of producing your own play - I thought, yeah, why wait around for others to produce my stuff, I'll do it myself! I checked the ads in the Bay Area Theatre Magazine and saw one for a non-profit theatre company called Multi Ethnic Theatre Company, or MET, in San Francisco, founded by Lewis Campbell, who also was its' director. I called him up and we talked, and agreed to meet - I had sent him a few scripts already, one-acts - he had read them, and we sat in the theatre office he had created in his Sunset District house, and he decided to do two of my plays that Fall - "The Glimmer" and "Return From Bird Island", a play about how my grandfather had to ship out at age 13 from the small Caribbean island that was his home, as a cabin boy on an old sailing ship, upon the untimely demise of his father. The two one-acts were billed as "Glimmer Island", and I signed a contract where I paid about $3,000 - since I had a job as a teacher, I had the money - and I had to come up with a business name, and then we drove to the theatre at Van Ness past Market - it was in the basement of an old Norman-style church - just a black-painted wooden floor with black flats for walls and curtains to the sides, a little light/sound booth, and about 50 seats - folding chairs on risers - but I could smell fresh paint , and it reminded me of painting some flats for a theatre in Berkeley called The Bare Stage when I was a housepainter, and had a play produced there called "Is There Life On Mars?" - it was exciting smelling that black paint and realizing that in a few months my own plays would be produced there in San Francisco in front of an audience. At the end of summer, rehearsals began with the resident MET cast - very nice people and very talented - it was also during those rehearsals I realized I had been to this same theatre decades earlier to see some plays - I was stoked! - I would take the BART over to the City, and then walk 30 minutes past City Hall to the theatre, soaking in all the sights and sounds of San Francisco - and I was walking to rehearsals of my own plays! Opening night was ominous - only 4 people including myself were in the audience waiting for the first play to start - I walked outside, depressed, into the courtyard, and thought of ducking out and taking the BART home before the lights even went up on the first play - but I thought no, I can't do that to these people who worked so hard to put my plays up, the director and actors - and I walked back in and sat down and the play started and after awhile the director sat down and then the house manager and an actor from the second play, and now we had 7 people, and it really didn't seem so bad, the plays were well-acted - it was a thrill to see them performed. The plays ran for 8 more performances to small audiences and no reviewers - but once an audience of 25 people! - and then after the last performance, we had a cast dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and the theatre went dark, and I drove home alone across the Bay Bridge. And it was over. But I had gotten the bug! - during that same summer a one-act comedy of mine, "Nuclear Fall-in", came in second in a contest sponsored by The Theatre In The Raw in Vancouver, Canada, and it went on a mini-tour of 10 little towns in British Columbia, ending with a performance in Vancouver, along with a couple of other winning one-acts - I couldn't see it, had no money to go, which I regret today - though later I did get a royalty check for $270! - and then I retired from teaching, got a little money, and first produced two days of a staged reading in Berkeley of "Another Depression", a full-length comedy of mine - now edited and called "Sitting by the Gene Pool" - and then produced a 3-week run of the same play that Fall in the Mission District in SF - by this time I had met the director I still like working with - Sylvia Baeza from Chile; I consider her my artistic soulmate - and a crew of very talented actors - again, not much audience, but we did it! - I made maybe $1200 from ticket sales and paid out 10 times that to produce it... and then in December, 2011, Sylvia called me and told me "The Glimmer" had been accepted into a Spring Theatre Festival at the Roy Arias Studios in New York City - Times Square, no less! - and we were off to another production! More to come from New York...  

Contact me at edballou@icloud.com if you are interested in producing The Glimmer.