Jul 23, 2022 3 min read

We don’t think of bank robbers as being particularly heroic, but Charles Arthur Floyd was an exception to that rule.

More widely known as Pretty Boy Floyd, he held up banks far and wide and was viewed in heroic terms by a Depression-battered nation, thanks to stories that he destroyed mortgage documents and relieved people of their debts before riding off with bags of loot. After he was gunned down in East Liverpool, Ohio, at the age of 30 in 1934, his funeral was said to have been attended by at least 20,000 people and perhaps many more.

Floyd’s short and colorful life has been mined for books and movies, and Washington playwright Bill Cameron has crafted a play out of Floyd’s last days. “Every Livin’ Soul” is a fictionalized account of a widow who takes in Floyd while he’s on the lam, unaware of who he is. Last weekend, the play won the top prize at the FutureFest festival of new, unproduced plays at the Dayton Playhouse in Ohio.

It was one of six finalists in the festival, chosen from 378 submissions. The plays were given staged readings at the festival and judged on such criteria as character development, plot, dramatic concept and language. This is the second time one of Cameron’s plays has been in the mix at the festival – last year, he was a finalist for “Truth Be Told,” a drama about a mass shooting that wrestles with how the truth can be manipulated.

By winning, the emeritus professor of communication arts at Washington & Jefferson College received a cash prize of $1,000 and a sturdy launching pad for the play. Later this year, it will be presented at a theater in suburban Dallas, and Cameron hopes it will eventually be presented in Pittsburgh.

“I’m hoping to build upon (winning the contest) and make something happen, but we’ll see,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Cameron has explored events and American culture from the 1930s in his plays. His 2007 play “Violet Sharp” looked at the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s son with a focus on the maid of Anne Lindbergh, the legendary aviator’s mother. In his plays, Cameron has also explored the 1960s murders led by Charles Manson and the life of David Bradford, the Washington-based lawyer and leader of the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion.

The other finalists in the festival were top-notch entrants, Cameron added, “which makes me even prouder that I won. They were terrific, all of them.”

Even if the top prize had eluded him, Cameron said the journey still would have been rewarding, given the opportunities to rub shoulders with other theater professionals and “meet people who are interested in the same thing. I would have been just as happy if I hadn’t won.”

He also appreciated getting their reaction to “Every Livin’ Soul,” as he continues to refine it.

“That’s what I love about the whole process,” Cameron said. “Working with other actors and getting their feedback. They have beautiful insights into it.”