Newsletter – July 24, 2026
I was reading a post on Substack the other day when another short play started germinating in my mind. While I was on my morning walk I started writing it in my head.
The Substack author, Sasha Brown-Worsham, described an incident that happened to her 19-year-old daughter. She was at the beach with her friends when they walked off to get food and she was suddenly alone.
An older man took the opportunity to approach her, started asking uncomfortable questions and wouldn’t leave her alone. When a dad in his 40’s saw what was happening, he approached her like an old friend and successfully deflected the advances of the other man.
Later, the daughter told her mother that she and her friends have a name for men like that: Girl Dads. Men who quietly steer other men away from a girl who doesn’t want the attention nor the expectations that go with it.
While walking, I came upon a young 20-something who was taking pictures of plants at the edge of the path. I could tell she was aware of my approach, and I wanted to put her at ease so I pointed to her phone and said “My wife has an app she uses to identify wild plants she wants to learn the names of.”
Her face lit up and she returned my smile showing me her phone. “I do, too!”
“Those are great.” I said cheerfully, and continued on.
Later, when I saw her again we exchanged waves and smiles.
My short play now begins with that young woman taking a picture of a plant when the unwanted stranger approaches. I currently have him in my script as “CREEP,” but I’ll have to come up with an actual character name.
Unlike my normal process, I’ve written a page of dialogue for when GIRL DAD gets involved and prevents CREEP from making further advances. I’m not sure how CREEP operates and tries to manipulate GIRL, but pretty soon I’ll have to strip down and step into that godawful bog to figure out what he’ll say and do.
That’ll probably alter the lines I’ve written already, but it think that’ll feel like a deep cleaning and I’m totally up for that!
I replied to Brown-Worsham’s post with my intent to write a three-hander 10-Minute play, adding “I like to think the arts can set a trend to normalize this kind of heroism.”
It can be a high bar, but I now belong to a playwrights group and I intend to get their valuable input once it’s in good shape.
TTFN
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Speaking of the playwrights group, I promised to let you know how the evening of five-minute play readings went last week (A Fugesberg Fourth). I thought it went very well and was pleased that my play got laughs in all the right places. The other plays did, too, and I’m sure the playwrights were happy with the readings.
I also got to enjoy the company of many people from Civic Theatre who had been involved in the Short Play Festival a couple of weeks ago. Three of them responded to the offer to join the Greater Lafayette Playwrights Group and our little cabal of creatives continues to grow. I love that.
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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles
Eric Margerum 