Introduce Yourself : Just a guy who writes by Gary Swartz

Hi kiddies, my name is Gary Swartz, I live in suburban Vancouver, and am a retired agency copywriter (Mad Men Era I guess in Toronto and Tokyo then Vancouver) on the wrong side of 70 and a one of these days if I stay above ground long enough I’ll make it dramatist. I’ve had a 1F/1M C&W musical (book/lyrics) called Country Love: the cheatin’ lyin’ hurin’ cryin’ musical produced locally, a reading of a 2F/1M straight play about Mao called Tears like Rain given a stage reading in Chicago, studio produced a CD of the songs from a 2F/2M musical (book/lyrics) called Whispers of the Heart WOTH), and have book and lyrics for 2 more musicals gathering dust – one in iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets (that actually might make a decent film) about Magna Carta and the other about the early life of the Buddha – and another straight play work in progress about bigotry, although the original intent was a work about diversity which proved to be too bland a subject, at least for me. The genesis for the urge to become a dramatist was an ill-formed theory conceived during a period I was freelancing and not very busy that a musical was just 180 30-second TV or radio spots combining slice of life with a jingle and observations about how much people enjoy live music gained from a 5 year sting when I freelanced a rock and roll column and saw 2-3 shows a week. While that 180 is a bit beyond hyperbole, it was enough to get me far enough into Country Love that it was too late to give up. Kind of where I’m still at. For whatever reason, I’m at heart a writer and not much interested in doing what comes next, i.e. pitching, but I decided a couple of months ago to stop writing and make a market push. A play publisher in the UK that already has Country Love, but no takers yet is looking at my Mao play and WOTH. Small theatrical companies in the US and Canada are looking at Country Love, WOTH and Tears and I am pessimistically optimistic – the glass is not empty but it is not full. The songs from WOTH and live performances of Country Love can be found at woth.org