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Alchemy Alive

Twelve Screen and Stage Plays

Peter Freeman

$30.95   $28.22

Paperback

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English
Ensilwood Publishing
05 July 2025
In Alchemy Alive: Twelve Screen and Stage Plays, Peter Freeman transforms his acclaimed short stories from Elements: Thirteen Stories into compelling scripts for screen and stage. Organized around the four classical elements-Fire, Air, Earth, and Water-this collection brings twelve vivid narratives to life in dramatic form.

Each script captures the emotional depth, social insight, and human complexity of the original stories while adapting them for visual and performative storytelling. From time travel and political intrigue to personal redemption and environmental protest, these plays span genres and settings but share a core commitment to exploring courage, connection, and transformation.

FIRE

Teasing Out Time - Skateboard punks grapple with the paradoxes of time travel. Political Persuasion - A jailed activist must navigate an uneasy alliance with a murderer. That Uncle of Mine - A boy confronts both fear and family dynamics with the help of a giant rat.

AIR

4. Hidden Message - A refugee's desperate quest across continents becomes a story of love and hope.

5. Permission - In the #MeToo era, a man searches for redemption for past harm.

6. Biblical Bytes - After abuse by a priest, a boy finds justice inside a divine video game.

EARTH

7. Switch - A professor's planned tryst is disrupted by unexpected presence-and conscience.

8. Shelter - Three stranded mountaineers confront hierarchy and survival in a snowbound hut.

9. Decision - A woman confides in her friends after discovering she's unexpectedly pregnant.

WATER

10. Surf's Up! - A middle-aged man reflects on life and mortality while waiting for his doctor.

11. Another Lousy Day in Paradise - Virtual reality and nostalgia collide in an unsettling way.

12. Water - Salt Springers unite to fight corporate greed and preserve their island's soul.

Written with warmth, insight, and cinematic flair, Alchemy Alive invites readers, actors, and directors alike to explore the universal elements that shape our lives.
By:  
Imprint:   Ensilwood Publishing
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   513g
ISBN:   9781990415418
ISBN 10:   1990415415
Pages:   386
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Author background=================Peter Freeman lives on Salt Spring Island on the west coast of Canada. He writes nonfiction and fiction novels, screen and stage plays, short stories, magazine articles, and poetry.Peter grew up in what was once the sleepy fishing village of Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast, just south of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. He started his career as a cadet surveyor and then as a journeyman fitter and turner before focusing on computer science at the University of Tasmania.While in Hobart, Peter joined the local rock climbing club, where he later met Max Dorfligger, a carpenter, shipwright, and famous Swiss mountaineer. Peter sailed across the Tasman Sea with Max in the thirty-two-foot sloop, Sunshine, that Max had built to New Zealand, where Peter then spent the next few years driving trains and building his sailboat, Laiviņa.Eventually, Peter sailed from New Zealand to Australia and then to Canada, where he incorporated an Information Technology company that produced and sold scientific and business software to universities, governments, and the private sector. In 1984, Peter departed Victoria, British Columbia, to sail his thirty-two-foot sloop, Laiviņa, on a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, breaking the existing world record with a time of 236 days. His book, Cape Horn Birthday, is an account of this journey.Peter is a masters athlete who has represented Canada internationally in world championships, competing in Italy, South Africa, Australia, the USA, and Canada, and has won gold, silver, and bronze medals in these competitions in the 100, 200, 400, and 800 metre events. In 2003, at 51, Peter was ranked 11th in the world and 1st in Canada in the 400-metre event for his time in Puerto Rico of 55.10 seconds.Peter has twice ridden his bicycle across Canada and, at the age of 61, bicycled the 15,400 kilometres around the perimeter of Australia, unsupported, in 79 days, averaging 200 kilometres a day.His colourful history has given him an endless vault of story ideas to write about, as his publishing experience illustrates: Awards====== - Winner - 2019 University of Saskatchewan, The Fieldstone Review's literary prize - ""Hidden Message"" - Best Short Story (Shortlist): ""In the Waiting Room"" - Best of 2018 Adelaide Literary Award - Best Poem (Finalist): ""Last Beating"" - Best of 2018 Adelaide Literary AwardPublished========= - Books ◦ Novels ▪ Deadly Delivery - 363 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025 ▪ The Silenced Boy - 266 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025 ▪ Fleeing the 51st State - 274 pages - Tablet Publications, Vancouver, BC - 2025 ▪ The Worm Lady's Daughter - 256 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025 ◦ Nonfiction ▪ Cape Horn Birthday: Record-Breaking Solo Non-Stop Circumnavigation - 348 pages - Seaworthy Publications Inc. FL - 2018. ◦ Short Stories ▪ Elements: Thirteen Stories (2nd Ed) - 305 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025 ◦ Screen and Stage Plays ▪ Alchemy Alive: Twelve Screen and Stage Plays - Fiction - 382 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2021 ◦ Anthologies ▪ In the Waiting Room - Best of 2018 Adelaide Literary Award - Short Stories - Adelaide Books, New York. ▪ Last Beating - Best of 2018 Adelaide Literary Award - Poetry - Adelaide Books, New York. ◦ Poetry ▪ Growth: Life's Flow in Poetry (2nd Ed - #1 Growth series) - 141 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025 ▪ Regrowth: Reaching for the Poetic Sky (#2 Growth series) - 119 pages - Ensilwood Publishing, SSI - 2025

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