L. Lewis Stout

The young son of a dynastic timber family struggles with his otherness as he helps a young woman in trouble. The young woman manipulates the son into a sudden marriage, moves into the house and overwhelms the family dynamic, edging out the "old folks". This four character drama follows the rise of a young women learning to take charge while she agressiveley finds her footing in the family of a declining and once domineering father. This play is the chronological first in an Embers cycle of three plays.

Setting: a timber town, the Embers great room
Time: the present
The story:
“Embers of Forgotten Fires” is a four character comedy drama set in the once prosperous great
room of a ruthless timber baron. Meredith, the wildfire matriarch of the Embers dynasty, is
losing her memory in a disturbingly selective fashion. Her daughter Carol and granddaughter
Kelly wrestle with Meredith’s random recall of family events that does not match the reality
they had believed. Kelly, a less than truthful college dropout, has moved into the family estate to
rebuild her own life while caring for the failing Meredith. Carol, disturbed by her mother’s rapid
decline and Kelly’s lies, returns home to take charge of the family. Coloring this turmoil is the
return of Meredith’s long vanished husband. Believed dead, the once timid Carl injects new
turbulence with his personal and professional persona as Cloris the M agnificent, a selfproclaimed
famous drag queen. The family rages between recognition and rejection of their
forgotten lies and half remembered truths. The Embers story is a forest fire of drama and comedy
as a family confronts a life they can barely believe and are uncertain they can accept.

Standing On Stone is set in a remote High Sierra campsite. A single tent and stone fire ring are the retreat for an old actor, committed environmental writer, to avoid arrest for blowing up an Oregon river power dam. His lifelong friend, another actor and director, packs in fresh supplies while they plan a spectacular event on a retreating glacier that neither of them is sure they will survive. A team pack of mules, run by one the toughest women in the mountains, brings supplies to their camp. Chance would bring a Canadian woman, recording a retreating ice flow, to cross with the two men on their approach to the ice bound mountain. This four-character comedy/drama, staged at a single tented campsite, does not debate environmental issues, but instead teases out human needs, personal desires, the need to take action even at the risk of one’s own life. These characters reveal their complex roots, their loves gone right, and loves gone wrong as they jab at each other’s weak spots, joke at their own follies, and seek to live the richness of their lives, while they can.

The attractive widow of a wealthy adventurer dares Arctic ice to retrieve his frozen remains in order to conceive his heir. The adventurer's sister connives to thwart the widow and keep her hold on the family's lingerie fortune.
A husky Canadian Mountie falls in love with a mysterious lady bush pilot. An airplane is hijacked and a secretive Honduran orchid rancher rescues its hostages. A calculating lawyer, his eager secretary, a quirky chauffeur, a suave Latin mortician and a voluptuous woman join them to quickstep through a comic landscape of lust, greed and expectant women.
Their multiple schemes gone wrong, the miscreants flee the wild orchids of Honduras and bump baby buggies at the Eiffel Tower. In a fate-twisting revelation, the lady bush pilot's true identity is exposed and the rich woman's testicle meets it match.
Treading at the edges of propriety, "The Rich Woman's Testicle" offers wit, hidden twists, secret identities, deceptions, beautifully half clad women, suntanned heroes, sight gags and tantalizing sexual liaisons that culminate in breathless satisfaction and orchids.