Updates
See "Plays/Stories/Poems" for the most recent pieces.
9/09 I am moving to Long Island City and working for AT&T Advertising Solutions as an account manager selling online advertising on the search engines and internet yellowpages.
6/08 Completed staged readings of two plays, "Ghost Composer" and "My Dinner with Amy" for the Northeast Theatre, soon to be The Electric Theatre Company, in Scranton, PA.
12/07 I am living in Kensington, in Brooklyn.
10/07 I am hopscotching around Brooklyn, NY.
9/06 I have moved to Denver, CO, and I'm working for GCI raising money for the DNC again. I'm a glutton for punishment.
5/06 "Winter" and "Free" have been published by Skive.
3/05 "Continuity" will be published in edifice WRECKED on May 1
"This is not my story" will be published on Word Riot the same day.
11/21/04 I just spent a few months raising money for the Democratic National Committee for Grassroots Campaigns, Inc., on the streets of New York City. I raised an average of over $800 per day. I raised $10,000 over the final week. During the election, GCI bussed us to Columbus, OH, to work as volunteers for MoveOnPAC. To read about those experiences, check out this article.
9/20/04 "Rocky" will be on edifice WRECKED on Oct. 1
"Elliot" will be published on Skive the same day.
I am now working for the DNC to raise money for Kerry, I raised $740 today.
9/1/04 "The Break" is published, http://www.skivemagazine.mockfrog.com.au/stories0904/thebreak.html
"Rocky" has been accepted
for publication at "edifice WRECKED" and may appear in their print
edition as well. www.edificewrecked.com
8/17/04 My story "The Break" has been accepted for publication at http://skivemagazine.mockfrog.com.au/ it will be up on September 1
6/16/04 In NYC, new phone is 917/375-7431
5/28/04 I am changing my phone number on June 15th when I get to NYC. My cell phone is operational until then.
5/2/04 I am moving to New York City in June.
2/9/04 Now a member of Actor's Equity Association, the stage actor's union.
5/9/03 Lots of production photos and reviews from "Little Shop" under that heading; plus, if you have windows media player you can hear a radio broadcast of one of the songs, "da-doo" with me narrating and the doo-wop girls singing backup.
2/18/03-4/27/03 I am in Sonora, CA, playing Seymour in the Sierra Repertory Theatre's production of "Little Shop of Horrors." Links, reviews and pictures are posted from root page. www.sierrarep.org
6/7/02 I am now a member of AFTRA (American Federation of Radio and Television Artists)
The Not-exactly-necessary Bio:
I am a now not-so-recent Northwestern graduate. If you haven't heard of Northwestern, US News and World Reports usually ranks us in the top ten of universities, often tied with Columbia, but with a different focus. We're also ranked by some magazine and most people as the top non-conservatory theatre program in the country. www.northwestern.edu While at Northwestern I performed in student and Mainstage dramas, student television projects, and a Mainstage musical and opera. I graduated from the Musical Theatre Certificate Program, and Assistant Directed and Dramaturged a highly controversial M.F.A. Thesis production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” With Rhoda Levine (NYC Opera’s production of “Rigoletto,” the world premiere of “The Life and Times of Malcolm X”) as Director, I Assistant Directed and performed in Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock” through the Northwestern School of Music. As an undergraduate director opportunities were limited. I directed Stephen Gregg’s “Sex Lives of Superheroes,” and the Fall 2000 Theatre and Interpretation Center Lab Show, Jonathan Marc Sherman’s “Women and Wallace.” Since graduation I have appeared in Steppenwolf Ensemble Theatre’s production of Brecht’s “Mother Courage and her Children,” directed by Eric Simonson (“The Song of Jacob Zulu” on Broadway, “Hamlet” with Campbell Scott at the Guthrie Theatre, Oscar® Nominated for his documentary about Ladysmith Black Mambazo, entitled "On Tiptoe").
You can find my name under "Past Productions" at the website: www.steppenwolf.org
Some of the more enjoyable parts I have played have been Seymour in "Little Shop of Horrors" at the Sierra Repertory Theatre, Tom in Frank Galati's adaptation of "The Grapes of Wrath," Edward in Vaclav Havel's "Largo Desolato" (I have a strange idea of fun) and Archibald Grosvenor (opposite the enchanting Hayley Kobilinsky), the epitome of beauty, in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride" (I'm told I looked like Barbra Streisand in the wig and the parachute pants). Also enjoyable were the heavily fat-suitted, mustachioed and manicured Hugo in Noel Coward's "Present Laughter," and Ray Romano in John Tchernev's all-Jewish TV project of "Everybody Loves Raymond."
Before Northwestern I lived with my family in Rochester, New York. Rochester is between Buffalo and Syracuse and is the home of Xerox, Kodak, Bausch and Lomb and Nick Tahoe's (home of the famous "garbage plate." What? You haven't heard of it?). I attended Brighton schools, except for a three year stint in McQuaid Jesuit. Oh, and I'm Jewish. You figure that one out. Now my parents have moved from Brighton to rustic Macedon, NY, only a few minutes from Hill Cumorah, the home of the Mormons, and Joseph Smith's farm. To read more about that, find "The Mystery Pageant" on the plays and stories page.
My sister currently resides in New York City. A major network was developing a series based on the DA's office she worked in before, but they just decided to cannibalize it for Law and Order: SUV. She's a social worker. We both just rake in the cash.
The first play I was in was in First Grade where I played the King of Hearts in the school play "The Shower of Hearts." When I started doing theatre Freshman year of High School I didn't remember that play for another two years. Maybe I'd repressed it. Then again, I could have stood to repress some of those high school musicals as well. Playing Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath" was memorable, especially because I later got to appear with many members of the Broadway cast later on in "Mother Courage" at Steppenwolf. I really got started by going to a summer camp called French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, www.frenchwoods.com, I wasn't the biggest fan after a while, but I did many many plays. At the end of High School I had been in roughly 20 plays, more if you counted Cabaret Troupes and Improv Groups. They were split about half musicals and half dramas. By the end of college I was doing almost exclusively dramas. Mostly because of the system. And I've now been in or worked on a combined total of about 35 productions and performed in front of a crowd of 100 or more probably upwards of 100 times in my life. Wait, I forgot "Mother Courage," so it's about 150-200 times in my life.
At Northwestern (www.northwestern.edu) my acting teacher was the Chair of the Theatre Dept., Bud Beyer. I also took notable classes with Paul Edwards (wish I had taken more) for Perfomance Studies, Rives Collins for Creative Drama and Children's Theatre and especially Mary Zimmerman for Performance are and Presentational Aesthetics, who won the 2001 Tony Award for Directing "Metamorphoses" on Bway, www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/spring1999/genius.htm that is a link to an article about Mary. Okay, so it's a big love fest, but honestly I saw "Metamorphoses" three times and you really can't put together a better play than that. Its universally salivating reviews were further evidence, and she won the Tony for Best Director. And the article is about her winning the MacArthur "Genius" Grant so it's not exactly going to be an exposé.
I've also taken On-Camera Acting with distinguished Chicago actress Peggy Roeder, seen in "The Road to Perdition."
I'll put in some links to places I either do go or should go more often (Links). For the record should it interest you for some reason my favorite writers, directors, artists, etc. is a lineup that might start out like this in no particular order:
Directors - Orson Welles, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, Woody Allen, Kubrick, Bergman, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Billy Wilder; Hal Hartley, Atom Egoyan, The Coen Bros., Wes Anderson, Wong Kar-Wail, Takashi Miike, Julie Taymor, Almodovar, Jeunet et Caro (together!) and the highly underappreciated Keith Gordon; in theatre Peter Sellars, Mary Zimmerman, Daniel Sullivan, Joe Mantello and Frank Galati.
Writers - Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, Haruki Murakami, Samuel Beckett, John Cheever, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Shirley Jackson, Chekov, Brecht, Ibsen, Hemingway, Patrick Marber, Sarah Kane, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Albee, Woolf, Virgil, Homer and more Shakespeare, not in that order.
Artists - Magritte takes the whole house down. Or at least three of the walls and half the floor. Escher took the staircase.
Movies - "Brazil"; "Touch of Evil"; "Blue Velvet"; "City of Lost Children"'; "8 1/2"; "Exotica"; "The Sweet Hereafter"; "Surviving Desire"; "Pink Floyd: The Wall"; "The Conversation"; "Citizen Kane"; "The Chimes at Midnight"; "Harold and Maude"; "The Ice Storm"; "A Clockwork Orange"; "Dr. Strangelove"; "Miller's Crossing"; "Titus"; "Aguirre, the Wrath of God"; "Metropolis"; "Wallace and Gromit"; "Natural Born Killers"; "Morvern Callar";"The Fellowship of the Ring"; "Heavenly Creatures"; "The Claim"; 'Lost in Translation";"Rushmore"; "The Royal Tenenbaums"; "Bottle Rocket"; "Mulholland Drive"; "North by Northwest," etc. etc.
Plays - Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure," "As You Like It," "Hamlet," "Titus Andronicus," "Twelfth Night" and the rest of them except "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; Beckett, "Endgame"; Sarah Kane, "Blasted"; Daniel MacIvor, "Never Swim Alone"; Yasmina Reza, "The Unexpected Man"; Ibsen, "The Lady from the Sea," and "The Master Builder"; Chekov, "Three Sisters"; Patrick Marber, "Closer"; Wilder, "Our Town"; Albee, "The American Dream"; Strindberg, "The House that Burned"; Sam Shepard, "True West"; Brecht, "Mother Courage"; Wallace Shawn, "The Designated Mourner"; Pinter, "Old Times"; Anouilh, "Antigone"; Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage"; Euripides, "Heracles"; Ionesco, "Rhinoceros"; and "Caesar and Cleopatra" by Bernard Shaw.
If you're all hot to look for these now you can buy probably all of them on Amazon.com except maybe "Chimes at Midnight" which I found in Canada.
If you want to learn more about the films go here: InternetMovieDatabase.com