I had a great idea for a new play after watching a television program about The Jetsons.  I don't know about you, but when I was a little kid, I LOVED the Jetsons.  I would watch the show on my parent's small black and white TV and marvel at the gadgets and gizmos that George, Judy and their kids enjoyed.  Going to work and pushing just one button.  Telling the computer what you wanted for dinner and it magically appearing on the table.  The Jetsons had a maid named Rosie, but the house was so automated that I wondered why they even needed her.  I guess she was the robot version of Archie Bunker's next door neighbor, George Jefferson- a fly in the ointment.  I loved the show and watched it religiously.  In later years, I wondered why this campy little cartoon fascinated me so and I have come to the conclusion that it was because the Jetsons gave me hope.  Hope that one day, all those gadgets and gizmos would actually come true.  As a kid, I thought that I might actually be able to fly my own car and stop at a drive-in floating in the sky.  Hope is a powerful emotion for a small child.  It helps them to get up every morning with wide-eyed wonderment thinking 'this might be the day' that they actually invent the flying car.  When you're a kid, anything is possible, right?  Well, I'm older now and in a lot of ways, I lost that sense of wonderment.  The flying cars and the one-button work world of the Jetsons never came true.  I still drive a regular car and there are no floating drive-ins.  Heck, there aren't even anymore drive-ins.  But, still there is hope.  Every time I start a new play or write a children's story, I still feel that sense of wonderment at what 'might' happen.  You see, most of the time, I don't know what is going to happen throughout the course of the story.  And it's this 'not knowing' that is so exciting.   I hope you will read Love On Mars and maybe it will help you remember a time when anything was possible. And hope was not just for children.

jeffreylovett