Hello, and welcome to the Le Theatre du Blaspheme web site. You may notice we've changed it, in that we've added the text you're reading right now.

You may be wondering what's holding up "Watching Paint Dry" our promised family drama about a family whose family members don't get along like a family.

And some of you have written to us, asking what became of "Gay Play," our play about gay guys that no one likes because they're gay.

Regardless, we feel confident that "Dating" our truth-hurts-romantic-comedy about the pitfalls of dates we've never actually been on will be finished by the summer. Stay tuned.

Anyway, the reason we've been indisposed is that, over the autumn, our writer Steve DeVries was selected to play the understudy to "Tom Tobacco" in the touring company of "Smoking Will Make You Go Blind." Funded by SUKAHS (the Society of Underappreciated Kiss Ass Honor Students) the play tours American high schools bringing kids the often overlooked message that smoking isn't healthy.

"I used to smoke," said Steve, speaking of his own struggle with tobacco addiction. "Now I'm blind."

Steve has been working hard, learning his lines, studying the every afternoon and waiting for his big chance to take the stage.

"I think I can bring something to this show that hasn't really been tried," he wrote to us from Grover Cleveland Middle School somewhere in Idaho. "Tom Tobacco -- even the name seems like such a characterization. But I've read the script, I've imagined myself in his shoes...I've gone the distance. I can truly say I understand this seven-foot smoking phallus better than anyone."

It's our hope that Steve gets to prove himself right before the tour ends with back to back shows next Wednesday at Sterling Middle School in Sterling, Massachusetts.

--Norman

Contact us at blaspheme@optonline.net