The following is the original text of an article by Roy Fox. An edited version of the article was printed in The Times-Ledger papers of Queens, NY as "Wanted: A NYC Audience for Hit West Coast Writer."

Stanley Elkin is a crazy, zany, wonderful author. Those of us that whiz through his novels do so just to see what he' s going to come up with next. For instance, in The Living End, he envisions a final scene of world history in which God gathers together every human being who has ever lived. The purpose for all of this, why was God bringing things to an end? Here's what happens:

Then God was there and strangely, all could see Him. There was not a bad seat in the house....It was short and sweet...."Because I never found My audience," God said. "Because I never found My audience." He looked at the assembled dead, at the living billions anxious at ground zero. "You gave me, some of you, your ooh's and aah's, the Jew's hooray and Catholic's Latin deference - all theology's pious wow. But I never found My audience." Well, on a much smaller scale, but just as important to him, John Twomey is beginning to wonder if he will ever find his audience. After all, he was born in Queens, he lives in Queens, his family resides here, he has written three Queens/New York City plays, very funny plays I might add, yet the East Coast has yet to see a full production of any of his work. Why, what does it take? I know we bad-mouth the West Coast. Done it myself, many times, and have always loved the classic put-down by Harry Ruby: "Living in California adds ten years to a man's life. And those extra ten years I'd like to spend in New York." Fine, me too.

Yet, all that aside, why do I have to go clear cross-country to hear the accolades of a chap who virtually lives on my front door steps. This is from Andrew Bamicle, the Artistic Director of the Laguna Playhouse:

"Let it be proudly known that the world premiere of John Twomey's Teacher's Lounge not only garnered excellent reviews from the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register as well as a host of smaller local papers, but broke the all time box-office records in the 70 year history of the 399 seat Laguna Playhouse." With additional productions of this play in San Diego, Flagstaff, Arizona and the just finished success in Durango, Colorado - quite frankly - I don't get it.

If there was ever a play written for the New York audience, Teacher's Lounge is it. A NYC high school where seven English teachers are proving that kids aren't the only ones with problems in life. Besides, kids don't have to teach kids and that's the biggest problem of all. Well just ask John. In real life he's an English teacher at Aviation High School in, you guessed it, the Borough of Queens.

Then there's All the City Lights and the view from O'Casey's Pub, a neighborhood bar and grille in Sunnyside. Again laughs galore, only along with it a poignant story of three generations, and the thoughtful moment when granddad, Seamus O'Casey, sides with his thirty year old grandson (Danny) in a career decision that is driving the father up a wall. Says Seamus: "A son poisoned with bitterness, and now a grandson poisoned as well." He encourages Danny to let the artist within flourish and to turn away from the sensible path his father is recommending. Sez he: "Sensible people are stiffs." Or how about Ball & Chain, the story of a Queens couple trying to stay in love and getting absolutely no help from their friends. In talking about his exasperating sister, and with her husband Roger listening in, Tommy says to Katie:

"You know how bridesmaids are supposed to have matching dresses and hairdos?... Margo's bridesmaids also had matching skin tones. She sent them to a tanning salon so they were color-coordinated....One bridesmaid had a tan line showing."

ROGER: Margo fired her.

KATIE: You can't fire a brides maid.

ROGER: Margo can.

Meantime, the real life scene is from John's apartment in Douglaston. From there, high up and looking west, is the whole ball of city wax. Throg's Neck/Whitestone Bridges, Manhattan skyline from the World Trade up to just barely a tip of the George Washington Bridge, all this seen through the eyes of a New York playwright that has to look much farther to the west for the support that his home town team has failed to provide.

Is it worth the effort? The frustration that comes with submitting plays that results in a drawer full of rejection slips? That question was answered for me when I was with John at a party and a friend of mine, Alison Harper, the director of Special Services for the Public Theater in Manhattan, asked him what it was like to be at opening night for his show out there at Laguna Beach.

We all watched as this thirty-something year old playwright of many words went silent. John Twomey was suddenly all aglow. His face took on the aura of a rapture, there was an ecstasy within created by a simple question that brought forth an onrush of unforgettable memories. This author of three wonderful plays answered the question without saying a word. The Signature Theatre, an off-Broadway house on 42nd Street which specializes in producing, for a full season, the work of a single playwright, this year has set aside their calendar for John Guare. I only mention that because this well known author comes from Jackson Heights, Queens. In line with that, I'm wondering if there is a theater group here in the Borough with the chutzpah to set aside an entire season in producing the canon of another Queens dramatist - this time the work of the man who glows when his plays are being produced. Way back in 1612 Thomas Heywood even outdid Shakespeare when he wrote: The world's a theater, the earth a stage, Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

Funny, three hundred plus years later, that's exactly the way John Twomey feels about Queens and his City of New York. It's time for the curtain to rise.

Roy Fox

King Manor

City of New York

Nineteen Ninety Nine

April the Twenty Sixth