Meet the Character: Archibald LeMay

tyunglebower ♦ May 4, 2015 ♦ 1 Comment

The fifth and final point-of-view character for my upcoming novel, Flowers of Dionysus is Archibald LeMay.

LeMay is probably not evil by most standards, but he is certainly unethical and even more certainly unlikable. Appointed the interim-president of the Little Dionysus Playhouse by the Board of Directors before the adjourned for the summer, the man seems to have little concern about the nature of community theatre, or the people who spend their time in one. Terse, rude, and not usually cooperative, Archibald LeMay strikes almost nobody as a wise choice to run the LDP.

Only on the job for a short time, he has already alienated actors, directors, volunteers and those in charge of other local theaters with whom the LDP had previously cooperated. It probably didn’t help matters that within a day he redecorated the office of his much beloved predecessor, even though he remains only the interim-president for now.

Why, oh why was such a man given such control over the playhouse?

It seems his genius with moving numbers and the ways of accounting when he was a board member had much to do with the choice. He got the theater out of debt faster than anybody thought possible, thus opening the way for a quick promotion when the previous president resigned for health reasons.

But will the “interim” in his title go away when the Board of Directors convenes again in the fall to appoint an official president? What would such a move mean for the LDP community? And just why is a man that seems to have zero theatrical understanding or passion even interested in running one in the first place?

Discover this guy’s motivation, and other things about him in Flowers of Dionysus, coming out next month.