Welcome to the official website for the award-winning dramatic writer Robert Cole.
Robert Cole has made his publishing debut. Songs of the Valley: Selected Plays of Robert Cole is now available from Holly Grove Press. In this collection, Cole takes readers to the startling fictional world of Walstone County, Alabama. The eight plays in this collection offer proof of the continuing literary legacy of the American South. It includes the full-length play Songs of the Valley as well as six short plays from Cole's Walstone Cycle-- She's Standing Behind Me, Above the Mountains, Cowboy Music, Osceola Cries, The Sexy Daughter Cheyenne, and The Lonesome Blue-- and the short play The Way She Lost Her Smile. A foreword to the plays is provided by theatre director Penn Genthner. The volume is available in hardcover print and as a download from Lulu and also in hardcover from Amazon (ASIN- B0029J40FQ).
On May 30, 2009, four plays never before performed publicly received readings at the Children's Dance Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama. The plays included the new full-length piece To Wander in the Dust, or Fire Nights and three plays from Cole's Walstone cycle-- Blue Savage, The Death Wrestler, and The Prayer for Heaven. The evening was directed and coordinated by R. Daniel Walker and was a great success. The reading featured performers Leslie Reagan Brown, Josh Clark, Ray Cole, Jennifer Gamble, Camille Spratling, Brandon Triola, Mr. Walker, and Krissy Warren. Thank you to everyone who came and shared their thoughts on the pieces.
We encourage you to stop by often for updates on new plays and upcoming productions & staged readings from this prolific and exciting playwright.
While here, browse the Plays section for synopses and information on all his current work. Also, check out his non-fiction work. Film criticism, theatre survey, and other essays will be added regularly. Take a look at the Biography and Reviews sections to read more about the creator of the world of Walstone County and Walbridge County, Alabama and their stories of love, youth & age, hope & despair, life & death.
If you are a literary manager for a theatre company, please take a look at the Script Request section to find out how to obtain a copy of any script for perusal.
Write to us at robertcole@walstonecounty.com to let us know what you think of this site. Thanks for visiting!
A Sense of Shakespeare in Film
There have been over six hundred film adaptations of the thirty-seven plays of William Shakespeare, who, for all intents and purposes, was the greatest playwright of any age. This is not because he was always particularly good with plotting or that all of his plays are assured successes, but because he had an eye and heart for the human being, who is at the center of the drama...