The thing about plays is that they are not meant to be read. They are meant to be performed. You can read a piece of music but it’s not the same as hearing it played. Reading plays, like reading music, is a skill worth learning.

The first play I ever read, in a high school English class, was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The thing I remember most about it is the line by Cassius, “The clock hath stricken three.” Our teacher enjoyed pointing out that clocks striking on the hour wouldn’t be invented for 1,500 years after Caesar’s time. Years later, after reading the plays of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, I wrote my first play, Digging Up John Barrymore. Dreamcatcher Entertainment in Manhattan performed a staged reading of that play in April 2012, followed by a Q&A with me and some of the creative team. It was an evening that continues to inspire me.

The last few years, through the Covid lockdown and all the other craziness of our traumatic age, have been an uncomfortable mix of hope and dread. Dread, for obvious reasons. Hope, for the tickle in the back of my mind that says we could be on the precipice of a new and better age. During these years, one story cut through my consciousness with a force that obscured all distraction. The voices of its characters would not rest until I pulled them out of my head and crafted them into a story. That story took shape as a play called Renewal that is being published today in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters.

The stories we tell ourselves are essential building blocks of our beliefs and perceptions. Sometimes we tell stories that glorify a mob boss or rogue cop. Sometimes we tell stories that celebrate violence as a cure for injustice. Sometimes we use a doll to expose the patriarchy. And, all too often, our stories invoke fear of science, medicine, and technology. Couldn’t we, instead, turn the power of our advancements toward humane and peaceful purposes? The way to do it is so elemental that a five-year-old could explain it. Or a Beatle. All we need is love.

So I wrote a play about love. About commitment and betrayal, fantasy and reality, addiction and recovery, laughter and lust, and about the magic spark that lives in all our hearts. It is the story of four couples – two young and two old – and their interactions surrounding a vow renewal ceremony.

If you can find a couple of hours, among your multiverse of time management options, to read a story that takes the form of a play, I would be honored if you spent that time with my play, Renewal.