Dear Reader,

Not long ago, I wrote to the American playwright Neil Wechsler. I had an idea for a periodical of plays and I needed contributors. He was quick to respond. In the subsequent weeks, we discussed my plans, the state of the theater, and in the end he sent a play. It is called The Brown Bull of Cuailnge, and it is my honor to share it here, in Plinth Magazine’s inaugural edition.

Each edition will offer an evening’s-worth of reading. Some will comprise a number of short plays, some a full-length work. This edition is a full-length work. The Brown Bull of Cuailnge is a play that stands alone. It is the kind of writing that reminds me why I love the theater.

More and more, I have come to think of plays as words on a page, something to choose with care and enjoy at home. Plays, of course, are meant to be seen, but what am I to do? The smaller companies are lecture halls, The Great White Way a country club. I have been forced to seek the theater in print. This magazine is that seeking.

At its core, Plinth is a literary journal. It is dedicated to the craft of playwrights and the joys of good reading. It is fitting, then, that I should begin with a playwright as extraordinary as Neil. The Brown Bull of Cuailnge is a play with outsize effects––entrancingly rhythmic, enduringly resonant.

A play read alone is a wonderful thing. For one, it reconstitutes the writer, who is missing from production, and assigns the many collaborative roles––actor, director, audience––to the reader. It addresses the individual, who is now proxy for the group. And it presupposes much less, since the action takes place not on stage but in the mind’s eye. It is different than a darkened theater, but there is value all the same. After all, there’s a reason they go to print.

Zachary Swenson
Founder, Plinth Magazine