Born in a Time of War

Please, follow along with the screenplay:

March 9, 1942. On this day, around nine in the morning, I took my first breath while my mother continued screaming, as she tells the story.

We were in the St. James Hospital, which is now a horse barn, near Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. My father was on his way to World War II.

Turning 80 was my goal to finish a screenplay that I began in my late fifties when my three play performance work, "Soup Talks Seattle" was presented with a soup supper intermission for 40 Guests in the abandoned brig of a former naval base located in Seattle's Magnuson Park in November 2000, and for which I was awarded a grant to adapt the work for video.

Only one play was completed as a movie, "#1. Voice of the Turtledove" which is available on Vimeo. My intention to make two more movies to complete the trilogy was put off again and again until nearly another 20 years were in the rear view mirror. 

March, 2022, was set as the goal to finish the screenplay, including all three plays, with the collective title "Memory of the Whispered Word."

The first play is about creation and the second, "Voice of the Hollow Man" is about war, about Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and the letters home to his young wife, the mother of their first born. Just as it was for my mother in the 1940s.

Making art of my life.

For the performances I interviewed my mother, Maxine, as if an oral history project of her experience as a new mother left behind as the even newer father goes off to war. The short clip above is Maxine's second interview from the live performance around a large conference table with gallery seating.

Thank you for indulgencing me tooting my own horn; and, let's here it for setting goals.

~w.

A family visit to a California beach before shipping out to New Guinea where my father saw no action and returned home to continue his service in the reserves.

You are invited to read or download the screenplay online: warnerblake.net/movies/,  and where you can follow a link to view the movie: "#1. Voice of the Turtledove."