My five-page five-minute play TOPPERS opens tonight at the Peave Avenue Theatre in Mountain View. It’s my first professional-level production, after four or five years of studying playwriting (I’m a slow learner) and I’m excited. What are eleven published books to this?

     Okay, maybe a lot. But still. To see the care, energy and insight the director and actors brought to my little epic is, frankly, humbling. They found approaches to the play that never occurred to me when I was writing it. And the expenditure on costumes and set — it’s set on top of a wedding cake, so tuxes and a floofy dress are indicated, but the notion that this little theatre company would provide them for what’s essentially a workshop production –

     Maybe this is why people stilll try to write plays in a country that has almost no interest in live theatre. To see what we’ve imagined re-created by other imaginations,other energy. It’s quite an experience.

      More after tonight.