Don Elwell

Dr. Don Elwell (born 1952) is an American novelist, Playwright, Director, instructor, and Blogger. He is the founding director of both the Greylight and Grindelbone arts organizations and the author of The Coyote Trilogy of plays as well as the novels In the Shade and The Ganymeade Protocol.
Early life
The son of a vaudeville performer, Elwell was born in Birmingham Alabama in 1952. When he was ten, the family moved permanently to their vacation home on Okaloosa Island in Fort Walton, Florida. The island, while beautiful, was isolating for a young boy used to a neighborhood full of children and relatives. Elwell grew up sailing, often alone, and remembers spending a great deal of time by himself with his own thoughts. Elwell became engaged in theatre in high school acting in plays and performing at various functions as a magician and escape artists, but it was while attending Stetson University that he made a commitment to the artform, changing his major from pre-law to Speech and Theatre and focusing on a theatrical career.
Theater
Graduating Stetson in 1974, he then completed a master's degree in theatre at Florida State University the following year.
Ultimately, Elwell found the film industry unsatisfying It was at Citrus that Elwell first produced Coyote, drawing from spoken word experiences at the North Hollywood Iguana Cafe Elwell would go on to teach in a number of institutions throughout his career, including Monmouth College of Illinois and Carroll College of Maryland, where he would create virtually the entire curriculum for the new theatre department.
Greylight Theatre
In the early 90’s, Elwell moved to Southern Illinois so that his wife, sculptor Gail Elwell, could complete her own graduate work. It was at this time that Elwell began his own studies for a Ph.D. through the Union Institute in Cincinnati and began, as a consequence of that research, the Greylight Theatre. Kenneth Boe, Robert Streit, John and Clare McCall, and others, as well as all three pieces of his Coyote Trilogy. Many of these works, as well as a history of the Greylight and depictions of the Greylight “process” for producing new work are included in a compendium published in 2001.
The Greylight also produced a number of festivals and happenings in this period, including the Southern Illinois Renaissance Faire and the DaDa Art Party. Following his work with Carroll College, Elwell created Grindlebone Arts as a way of bringing the Greylight process to the Baltimore area, producing The Death of Maynard G. Krebs and Cyberpunk Opera and Dub for Babylon from his trilogy, as well as works by Margie Pignataro.
During this same period, Elwell set up Wild Shore Press, an online publishing house printing his own catalogue of plays and other works as well as those of others, including a collaboration with 60’s pop Icon Ian Witcomb. Most of the Wild Shore titles have since been moved to Create Space, the in house publishing company of Amazon.com, for distribution.

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