An Assassin for What??

Years ago in Northeast PA (which does seem like a galaxy far, far away at this point), I had to walk to the end of the street to get my mail. As I exited my house and entered the road, two dogs across the way would bark at me from a badly-built enclosure. When I would pass behind the plywood section and they couldn’t see me, they’d stop barking, but when I re-merged they’d start again. They were very annoying.

One day, I was so annoyed, I thought, “Isn’t it too bad that there’s no hit man for noisy dogs?” And something clicked, and I realized I needed to write that play. So I formulated it, and then began the writing process that became Dog Assassin (the play).

But I wan’t completely happy with it. It was too short to be a full-length play and too long to be a one-act. But how to make it the right length? Of course! Add songs and make it Dog Assassin: The Musical!

So I added the lyrics, for which Jeremy dePrisco would eventually add music for a production in 2012 when, coincidentally, the world did not end in spite of people’s interpretations of the Mayan calendar.

I got to thinking about the process because I’m working my way through boxes from my storage unit and came upon the Dog Assassin file which contained a variety of versions of the play. Since I don’t think I will ever be donating my papers anywhere for someone to study the evolution of the play, I recycled a set of the scripts. Of course I kept the final versions of the play and the musical, which you can purchase from smashwords.com.

And I would love to see someone else produce it.