My Story

My entrance to the world of theater began in 1992 with a phone call from a graduate school friend, who convinced me to attend an audition for Laura, a murder mystery. The theater in question was looking for a male in his 30s to play the role of McPherson, a hardboiled detective, and, thus far, they’d been unable to find anyone with the right look for the part. She said that I had the look they were searching for, a “detective’s chin,” and that my lack of acting experience – I’d never actually been onstage before – was beside the point. I auditioned, I was cast, and my new life began.

At the time, I was enrolled in a graduate program in Creative Writing, absorbed and dedicated to the writing of fiction, but the theater quickly shifted my emphasis to playwriting. By 1996, I’d had a few short plays produced, including one with the preposterous title, Isn’t Henry Miller the Guy Who Was Married to Marilyn Monroe?, and a full-length play, One True Marriage, (which took its title from a Henry Miller quotation: “In the last reaches of being, there is but one true marriage, each person wedded to himself.”) From there, I spent a year studying playwriting at Ohio University, and another year studying screenwriting at U.C.L.A.

In 2001, and by then employed at Vanguard University as an Assistant Professor of English and Theater, I was approached by a colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Dermody Leonard, who asked me if I’d be interested in turning her original research into a stage play. She’d written a book based on interviews that she’d conducted with 42 women who were serving long prison sentences at the California Institution for Women at Chino for killing their abusive partners. A dozen visits to the prison later, where I met and got to know the women, I was able to transform Dr. Leonard’s academic research into my play, Life Without Parole. Life Without Parole has by now received productions in New York, Los Angeles, Canada, and at the prison itself, in front of the women whose words are spoken in the play. It has been the subject of an NPR story, received a Gold Medal Award for my screenplay adaptation, and been showcased in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Even now, nearly twenty years after that first meeting with Dr. Leonard, the play continues to receive interest and attention.

Enlightenment.com was my next real breakthrough, a modern-day romantic comedy in which I aimed to create a kind of 21st century Shakespearean comedy. In doing so, I relied on many of the dramatic strategies and archetypes that the Bard used in his plays – miscommunication, deception, love conflicts and resolutions, the Shakespearean fool. Given its contemporary setting, I incorporated technology – e-mail, iPhones, text messages, and websites – highlighting the challenges and the “breakthroughs” that our current modes of communication bring to the world of relationship. The play broke box office records at the Arizona theater that commissioned me to write it, and in its West Coast Premiere, it received rave reviews from the press and the audiences who came out to see it.

The success of Life Without Parole and its depiction of domestic violence, led to my being asked to write a play about mental illness. The result was Development, a script that dramatized the pain and suffering that mental illness brings to a family. The script first focused on a schizophrenic father wandering in the Mojave Desert on the last day of his life, before shifting to the son, a twenty-something Hollywood producer, who has inherited the gene, and his brother, an aimless drifter, who has not. The play moves back and forth in time, from the California desert to Hollywood and Vine and back to a life-changing event in the Valley of the Little Bighorn. The play received sold out productions in Flagstaff, Sedona and Los Angeles, and we held talkbacks after each performance, as audience members asked questions and shared their own experiences.

Angels in Disguise is my most recent play, receiving its premiere in December, 2019, at Theatrikos Theater Company in Flagstaff, Arizona, which was looking for a different kind of “Christmas show,” one that was new, contemporary and inclusive. The play incorporates Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, Transcendentalism, and Christmas, too. Despite competition from neighboring theaters, who were producing more traditional fare – “A Christmas Carol”; “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol”; “The Nutcracker” – Angels in Disguise generated tickets sales above 90%, selling out most nights, and connecting with audiences who were looking for a more inclusive picture of the holiday season.

During my time of crafting and producing these plays, I’ve also built a career as an academic, and I am employed, (and have been since 1998), at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, California. I am currently a Professor of English and the Chair of the English department, a position that, although demanding, offers the perfect balance to my theatrical endeavors. So, too, the many short stories, essays and articles that I’ve written and published over the years, as well as the award-winning screenplays – listed on this website – and the shorter plays I’ve written over the years. As any writer will tell you, every project is a bit of a struggle, and there are times when I feel like I’m running in quicksand, but, over time, I’ve managed to get a lot of the work done, and this website catalogs that journey. Thank you for taking the time to visit.

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