I don’t know when exactly it started but when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark (during its original release) I was finally able to articulate it: I want to do that. “That” was to be Harrison Ford. Sure, as a kid I wanted to dance, I played dress up, all those things but something changed when I saw Raiders. But true to my roots, rather than rushing toward it, I procrastinated, perhaps thinking, as my mom often told us when we were sick, “If you’re still sick next week, we’ll go to the doctor.” Since acting isn’t widely recognized as a sickness, there was no doctor to see which meant there was nothing to do but wait it out.
Finally, in 1995 I spent an intense summer studying Practical Aesthetics, an acting technique, with the Atlantic Theater Company in Burlington, VT where Bernie Sanders was no longer mayor. Or maybe he wasn’t mayor yet. Put it this way, as far as I know, I did not cross paths with Bernie Sanders. I did, however, cross paths with David Mamet, William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, Scott Zigler, Robert Bella, and many others. Aside from the intensive acting program I attended, the Atlantic Theatre Company’s other main offering that season was a production of JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner, directed by Mamet and starring a roster of Atlantic actors. I saw the play six or seven times, had a wonderful but brief conversation with Mr. Mamet and then decided acting was no longer my main interest. I wanted to be a writer.
So I wrote these plays.