The Agony/Ecstasy of a Solo Show
The most disheartening question you will ever hear from an actor friend is “Will you come see my solo show?” We’ve all cringed in our seats, eyeing the cell phone […]
writing
Tellin’ It Like It Should Be
Discerning what’s real and what’s not in our increasingly byte-sized reality is becoming a savagely challenging task. Add a home address in Hollywood, CA. and it can become downright surrealistic. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Before the Corridor
It was January 2000 and America breathed a collective sigh of what-ever at the undevastating non-effects of theY2K bug. For months prior, the algorithm had been fear-mongered onto every front […]