Often, people have asked me: what is it with you and aliens? If you check out this webpage you might think I claim to have been abducted. This is totally untrue— I don’t think I was ever abducted by aliens.
BUT! I love conspiracy theories…or at least I did until the whole QAnon nonsense tried to fill the vacuums in certain needy minds. Before that, I loved looking into conspiracies, and those involving aliens are my favorites. The races/species, their visitations to our planet, the technology hidden in Air Force bases known only to secret organizations such as Majestic 12. I collected all sorts of documents crammed with this kind of information back in the early days of the world wide web. I’m sure I could still locate my printouts somewhere in my files, such as the document detailing “How to Tell If You’re An Alien.” (One telltale sign: “Do you feel a sense of entitlement when automatic doors open for you?”)
At some point in my discovery process I started formulating some play ideas involving aliens. The first of these: Aliens! 3 Miles, Turn Left. An ordinary guy, returning home from his weekly poker game, finds a spaceship and aliens in his backyard. So he does what any freedom, loving American would do: he shoots them! And then he decides to open a roadside show place for fun and profit. I’ll let you read the rest of the story, or you can watch the film of it that I made on YouTube. It’s on my channel, StephenSchrum.
Aliens! or parts of it, have been seen around the world. I responded to an editor’s call for men’s monologues, and part of the play was published in two different books: One on One: The Best Men’s Monologues for the 21st Century, published in 2008 by Applause Theater and Cinema Books, and Audition Monologues for Young Men, published in 2016 by Meriwether Publishing. (I also have a monologue from my original musical, Dog Assassin, in One on One: The Best Women’s Monologues for the 21st-Century published in 2007. I have a Facebook friend who got an acting job using it as an audition piece.) As a result, over the years, I’ve gotten emails from people on five continents asking to present the Aliens! monologue, either for an acting class or a full performance. For the latter, I always said, no royalties, but send me a program. I never did get a single program.
One of the coolest things that happened with the play, by the way, in addition to the world premiere in 1994 starring Dave Scopinich as The Man, was that during the Covid year, I was contacted by a theatre company in Ohio. They wanted to put it on as a solo piece and present it through their YouTube channel. The performance was picked up by the Red Curtain International Good The@tre Festival, and was part of their proceedings. Unfortunately, the performance could not be selected for an award, since it wasn’t presented live; the performer actually wound up having Covid during the weekend of the online international performances.
After having written Aliens! I had an idea for a second aliens play: Abducted! (I seem to like exclamation marks and question marks in my titles; see Wash Hands. Saves Lives?) The idea originated in a news story I had heard about a woman claiming her children were abducted, but it turned out she had actually killed them. I used this as the foundation, changing the culprit of the alleged kidnapping to aliens. It’s an interrogation room one act, as the detective tries to discover what really happened.
I won’t tell you anymore about this play either, as you can go purchase the e-book Two Plays About Aliens, available on Smashwords.com.
As I detailed in a much earlier podcast of Audio Chimera, Episode #2, I have a touch of OCD. And part of my OCD suggested that two plays about aliens wasn’t enough, and I needed to write a third, to complete the trilogy. So I began composing They’re Among Us. Starting with my love of conspiracy theories, I conceived of an author who would use a website dedicated to such ideas for his writing. He thought he would post something totally crazy and let people either pick it apart, or suggest other ideas. Unfortunately, a secret government agency gets involved, and… well, you can watch for yourself what happened; I made a short film of this play, available on YouTube.
In recent years, I’ve been neglecting my alien brethren. I wrote a steampunk novel dealing with an immortal alchemist and his colleagues, and I’m currently working on another novel dealing with Knights Templar, a Hospitaller, and a bard returning from the crusades. You’ll see what happens when, in several instances, they walk into a tavern. Am I finished with aliens? For the moment. But you never know!
By the way, at some point, someone sent me an email, having seen a post about Aliens! 3 Miles, Turn Left, asking about my experiences with aliens, wondering if they were “dwarf aliens.” Part of the email reads as follows:
It is a pleasure to contact you. I have had one contact with a dwarf alien when I was very young. I wanted to find out if you had encountered one of these dwarf aliens dressed in a silver jumpsuit with a button on the left side of the chest and also a beam pistol and a holster on the right side. The disked shaped UFO was about 10ft in diameter. When this alien walked down the ramp he was very small and as he walked toward me he manifested himself from a small semi-solid elemental type entity untill he finally solidified into a solid form that was about 4ft tall. I wanted to know if you had any information about this type of entity and if you have had first hand experience with this type. Also, I wanted to share what I could at this time about my experience with this small “alien” as a courtesy to one who has experienced simular experiences. I have included all the info I could gather during the past 2 years about this dwarf “alien”.
And then there’s three more pages. Even in this age of misinformation and disinformation, I still keep saying the phrase: you can’t make this up.
Keep watching the skies!
MUSOFYR 