Contributed photo AWARD-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT Douglas Bowie's play Rope's End will be performed at the Orangeville Theatre starting Feb. 14. Most writers hate when they're asked where they got an idea. Canadian playwright Douglas Bowie doesn't hate it but you can tell it makes him uncomfortable.

Theatre Orangeville is producing his play, Ropes End, in February. The award-winning playwright said the idea came from some old files he found on his desk. He joked that if anyone had ever tidied his workspace he might not have found it.

"The idea was really so slim it could have lent itself to anything," he said. "In these two pages it was just characters talking to each other and I managed to turn it into something worthwhile."

Bowie's career began three decades ago while he was with an Ottawa ad agency. He entered a contest sponsored by the CBC, with his first script, "Who Was the Lone Ranger?"

He won and with the newfound confidence of a winner, began submitting other scripts.

To his dismay, however, the next two, however, were rejected. But he kept going, and over the next three decades he found success with a number of film, television and stage productions.

How much he gets involved at the local level in the production of his plays seems to depend on the plays themselves, and how comfortable he is with his final product.

"I tend to be involved, but having said that, I haven't been involved in the Orangeville production at all," he admitted in an interview.

"I was pretty satisfied (with this script) and I was happy to let it out into the world, but some of my previous work I have followed them around because I felt that I never got them right."

He said actors don't usually like to see a playwright involved because if there is a rewrite during rehearsals they have to relearn lines after just memorizing the old ones. Some writers, he added, like to hand in a project and move on, but Mr. Bowie isn't like that.

"I've made changes at the beginning of a play, and even in the middle of a run if I didn't think something is working. It doesn't necessarily mean they'll take my ideas but I will speak up. I'm really not one to bite my tongue, it's my play and I'll speak up."

He added that the current strike by the Writers Guild of America is affecting his work. Mr. Bowie is a member of the Canadian Writers Guild, which is officially supporting its American counterpart in its job action. His agent wanted to hand over one of Mr. Bowie's scripts to an American TV network but was not permitted according to the job action, and he can only hand his work to Canadian networks.

But he does see the strike ending in time for next month's Academy Awards because, he says, there is too much at stake.

"There is going to be so much pressure in light of the Awards, and what they're asking for is not unreasonable, like asking to be paid for work in new mediums like DVD's. It's a lot of the things that we already have here in Canada. It seems obvious that if you're going to make some use of a script in a secondary market then the writer should get a piece of that."

He's just finished working on a television script and he's in the middle of working on another play, which he admits looks like a mess at the moment, but said will turn into something down the road.

According to his bio, Mr. Bowie's most acclaimed work is perhaps the C BC mini-series "Empire Inc.", which won him an ACTRA award for Best Writer.

He is currently the Playwright in Residence at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, near his home in Kingston.

Ropes End is a romantic story about a middleaged man who is depressed and alone. When he comes across a picture of his first love he decides to find her.

The production starts on February 14.

Visit www. theatreorangeville. ca for more information.