Playwright plans Swan song to wrap up a successful career

Col. James Swan is the coolest Maine historical figure you never heard of.

Jimmy was at Bunker Hill at age 18.

Jimmy was at the Boston Tea Party, for God’s sake.

He was a pal (if you can believe him) of George Washington, Lafayette and other Revolution dudes.

He was wounded twice during the Revolution.

If that’s not enough, he tried his damnedest to save Marie Antoinette and her posse, only to be stopped by the French and returned to port.

He wrote a serious history of the slave trade by age 19.

Jimmy had enough weight to establish a colony at Swans Island in 1784, which still bears his name. He offered free land to settle his new island and built a saw mill and grist mill.

Yet no one knows much about him. Jimmy needs an agent.

His agent, for the moment, is Camden playwright Robert Manns.

Manns, who has seen his plays performed off-Broadway, in Florida, Atlanta, and back again, has his 76-year-old eyes now focused on Swan and the Camden stage. He is applying the finishing touches to a play about Col. Swan, and wants to form a new theater company which might even pay its actors.

Manns isn’t focusing on

Swan’s wounds or exploits in this country, not even in Swans Island, but in France, where Jimmy had some very good, then some very bad times.

Jimmy made the mistake of returning to France in 1808, when his credit had taken a decided turn for the worse. During his previous visit, he neglected to pay his bar tab and room service charges at some Left Bank hotel.

French officials, a notably prickly lot (especially when it comes to Americans) threw Col. Swan into debtor’s prison, which our historians tell us was not a very nice place. Swan, a Scotsman, denied that he owed the Frenchman a single sou and refused to pay. The historians fail to tell us how much was owed, but it must have been substantial, since he spent 22 years (years!) in the French prison.

Thank God, Louis Philippe ascended to the throne in 1830 and decided to close those nasty debtor’s prisons as a public relations move, to get the bleeding-heart liberal vote. It was a little late for Jimmy, who died three days after his release.

“Imagine a man, any man, spending 22 years in debtor’s prison for debt he did not owe. Most of us would have paid the debt, regardless, just to get out of prison. Not a Scotsman,” said Manns, a playwright of some repute.

After fleeing Detroit and military school, Manns ended up at Wayne University, where he fell under the spell of English professor Jacque Salvan, an early translator of Jean Paul Sartre.

Salvan encouraged Manns’ writing so much that the playwright moved to New York City. He got a job at a radio-television store, where he waited on noted Broadway producer Alan Schneider. (Sounds like a play in itself).

With a little arm-twisting, Schneider read Manns’ plays then agreed to produced “A Tripos” in Westport, then off-Broadway. Just when Manns’ career was in overdrive, he fled (another play) to Florida, where his plays “The Rats” and “Night of the Frogs” were produced, along with his favorite, “Lincoln in the White House.” The Lincoln play was scheduled for, then dropped from, production in Montreal last year. Supposedly, all kinds of people are interested in bringing “Lincoln” to the big screen.

Manns can’t wait.

At 76, he doesn’t know how many years are left. “This will be my last play. I want it to be a good one.”

He is in the final rewrite of the Swan opus and already has started forming a new theater group to produce the play, hopefully in the Camden Opera House next year.

Manns had read snippets about Col. Swan in several history books over the years. But it wasn’t until he fell across a Revolutionary War history at Picton Press in Rockport last year that the play idea took root. The first draft started in April. The last draft went to the printers this week. The current plan is for production at the Camden Opera House next summer.

If Robert Manns has anything to say about it, Col. James Swan, the father of Swans Island, will be a historic footnote no longer. If he has anything to say about it, the actors will even be paid.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.