Prefactory Note to Portfolio III

by briankessler@nowhereatall.net

8 April 1999

For this final portfolio, I have included excerpts from my stageplay "Transvestite Slain" and my co-authored screenplay "Neptune to Babylon" (written with Jon Seidman). Assembling this final portfolio is not as easy a task as cut and paste. Dropping the issue of layout, which I take pride in, my first complication is a general repugnance towards taking my work out of context. But this holisticisim is actually the easiest of the problems.

The easiest answer would be to just include the best scenes. While this would be easily possible, I'll be the first to admit that it wouldn't fit my own notion of academic honesty. "Neptune to Babylon" dates its beginnings back to 28 April 1998; "Transvestite Slain" dates in original coneption and execution back to July of 1992.

Valid arguments can be made towards working with fresh material, but I have a personal goal of bringing both works to final completion before I leave for France this summer. While working on these projects extensively, I have neither time nor inclination to adopt a third child.

The final obstacle in regards to "Neptune to Babylon" is the close-knitted co-authorhip with my friend Jon Seidman. Many of the lines have been worked so-extensively that neither of us can really claim to have written the original lines. And even when lines are identifiable, few entire scenes are. And then we have both editted each other's work several times over.

Thus, what I have attempted to assemble here is not what is necessarily the best of either work -- rather, this portfolio represents the best which is recent, and accept as otherwise might be annnotated, substantially mine.

The two works are available in their current entireties upon request.