Quote:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”--Martin Luther King

Monday, October 8, 2012

Publishing Day/Charles Deemer


I am pleased to publish this book by Charles Deemer at Round Bend Press.  Varmints is his fourth publication for RBP.

A tragi-comic opera of the Old West

"In the 1988-9 theater season in Portland, Oregon,

Steve Smith, artistic director of Theatre Workshop,
produced a retrospective of my work he called
“Charles Deemer's Oregon.” This became a season of
three plays at the Firehouse Theatre: revivals of The
Half-Life Conspiracy and Waitresses; and concluding
with the premiere of a new play, which became
Varmints. The latter was supported by a grant from
the Oregon Arts Commission. The play opened on
April 28, 1989, directed by Gary O'Brien.

A decade later I became interested in writing for
opera. My first project was the libretto to Dark
Mission, a 2006 opera by the composer John Nugent.
The project went so well that John and I wanted to do
another, and I suggested adapting my stage play,
Varmints. John, however, found career and life
demands so pressing that he decided to concentrate
on the more popular form of musical theater. I ended
up with a libretto but no composer.

A draft of the new libretto remained buried in the
mess of my home office until I stumbled upon it a few
years later. I read it and liked it. I began revising it,
and this book is the result of the effort.

Here, then, is a libretto that desperately needs
music. I publish it in order to make it available to
composers. Someone, I hope, will find the material
exciting enough to bring it to musical life."

Charles Deemer
October 5, 2012



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