Scoring Ain’t Easy
Occasionally on this whirling carousel called life, things just seem to click: the deal closes, the plants flower, the opposite sex finds us irresistible and throws themselves at us without […]
alex lyras
One-Man Shows and the Woman Who Perfected Them
Even though I’ve been the only person on stage for five original theater pieces, I never tell people I’m doing a “one-man” show. There’s no faster way to turn […]
The One Man Odyssey
The history of the one-person show is likely as old as language itself. Maybe older. It’s not unreasonable to imagine an overly animated, pre-linguistic Australopithecus grunting out story points in […]
Stage vs. Film
There was an awkward moment after the Off-Broadway opening of The Common Air. The play, which links 6 characters during an airport delay, was written with Robert McCaskill, who also […]
The Air In Ojai
I did not recognize the 805 area code, but after answering my reliably spotty iPhone, I was surprised to learn it was an equity theater in Ojai, California who wanted […]
Note For Note
Honoring America’s Cultural Foundation It can be argued with some confidence that there are no American art forms more authentic and influential than Jazz and Blues. Not even baseball, which […]
Unfriendly Skies
The pleasure of doing anything on stage is who might be in the audience that night, and I don’t mean celebrities. Exiting the theater last night, I was greeted by […]
The Forgetful Doper
Every so often, Stetson Makakowitz would lose everything he owned and have to start his life over again from scratch. It was a terrible affliction that he could do nothing […]
My Friend Herb
The lemon basil sagged on the granite counter in his absence. It was proud strain of the herb. It had been acquired at the affordable price of nothing at the […]
The Iceman Bummeth
Of all the positions in all the wide world of sports, one stands alone with the dubious distinction of being the loneliest: that of the ice hockey goalie. All goalies […]
The Unfortunately Fortunate
One of the most serious dangers in economic downturns such as these is turning a blind-eye to the neediest of cases. As usual, the hardest hit group of all has […]
Post Modern Woman
As a post modern woman in new millennia America, I often find myself wishing, willing even, that there were more than twenty-three point four hours in a day. Time is […]
Philosophical Foreplay
The woman in my bed was such a dollface. So unlike the women I had been with before. She had a subtle beauty, one that would look good in extreme […]
The Topography of an Audience pt 1
From the stage, it’s never boring figuring out what type of audience you‘re performing for. Audiences are limitlessly fascinating. They’re living organisms. They may act as a whole, but like […]
The Topography of an Audience pt 2
Once they settle into their seats, the topography of an audience is a fascinating thing to measure. Bleecker 45 is a 300 seat house with a thrust stage, meaning the […]
Rahm Taps Brother Ari For Obama Audition
Beverly Hills, March 14th – White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel has called in a favor with little brother Ari Emmanuel, founder of the Endeavor talent agency, in hopes […]
Michelangelo Was A Hack
It is easy to forget when looking celestially at the dizzying brilliance of the Sistine Chapel’s intricate ceiling that Michelangelo was, at one time, a complete and total hack. At […]
Control, Alt, Repeat
“How do you remember all those words?” It’s a common question civilians often ask of actors. And the basic answer, save horse-sized pills of Ginkgo biloba, is brutal repetition. […]
Lose Your Cash and Your Ass Will Follow
When I was but thirteen years of age, a slick haired, befreckled Latino man in a New York Cosmos guayabera approached me on a Metro North train bound for the […]
You Asked For It
Whenever you produce a play, you can be sure there’ll be a confluence of conspiracies awaiting you prior to opening that will insure the maximum amount of stress and anxiety […]
Unlimited Austin – Part 1, Everything’s Bigger In Texas
It was amidst the torpid deluge of sweat from the predominantly under 25 crowd at The Coachella Music Festival where I realized, with unsullied clarity, just how much better the […]
Unlimited Austin – Part 2 Dionysus in Cowboy Boots
I’ve often heard it said that a band “hits the stage”. For those who weren’t ever sure why, see Gogol Bordello, an interracial myriad of gypsy troubadours who hit the […]
Plenty More Fish In the Sea…
Of all the multitudinous living organisms in the phylum cordata, none are quite so fucked as fish. Scientifically, the entire species is toast for several reasons. The sad thing is, […]
I Me Mine
(Originally published in Elmore Magazine) It was somewhere between the birth of Napster and credit default swaps– when the rest of our understanding of how markets work went out the […]
Putting Things Into Perspectivism
We wander into town to buy a pair of cleats for the start of spring intramural soccer season. The year is 1990, and world cup fever is brewing for the […]
Wanderlust
What’s most essential about cities like Manhattan, Paris and London are not their endlessly variegated tiers of high and low culture, their multitudes of peopledom, or their architectural majesty. Those […]
Freddy D’s Party on 114th
The newlyweds in 5L pull open the door at the same time my boy D does, and we all step into the hall landing, blinking freshly ceased sleep from our […]
Re-gentrified
As modern as it may feel, the current all–too-trendy invective against the gentrification of certain New York neighborhoods is almost as old as the city itself. E.B. White complained about […]
The Whole Wide World
It was far too many bits for any one brain to process. It was the entire information age exploded inward, swirling like some three dimensional Rorschach lava lamp broken open […]
My Creative Genius
People often ask me, “How do you do it? How do you continually create such timelessly inspiring oeuvres of sesquapedalianism?” I laugh, sometimes to myself, because in truth, there’s really no […]