It only takes for me one simple project, one little acting role, to make me a significantly better-feeling person.

The Year 2002 has started off with a bang so far. I went on a trip to Detroit with Yahoo! as their "World's La-Z-iest Auto Guy," a modified version of the five-week long gig I did with Yahoo! in 2000 as the "World's La-Z-iest Shopper." My Law & Order episode re-aired on TNT on January 14th, and I got cast in a reading of Bob Ost's Breeders. Also, I am assistant directing under Marcus Geduld for Stomping Ground Productions the Shakespeare play, The Winter's Tale, and going on Equity Principal Auditions and dropping by open calls at modeling agencies for commercial print work. I feel busy again!

I finished my first full-length play at the end of November--called Elemenopy--a serio-comic take on my life with self-diagnosed attention deficit disorder. Feeling very good about the first draft, I got together some friends of mine and had an informal reading of it December 1st, for feedback and for furthering its development. It's the next big project that is baking for me. I am torn between acting in the lead role or directing the play; most of me wants to do the role, but part of me wants to make sure the play is serviced well in the direction. From past experience, I want to stay away from directing and acting in the same show.

I resolved in December that when the work isn't coming (as it hasn't for a lot of my actor friends for much of 2001), I need to generate my own work. And if I'm not getting recognized and earning respect via more traditional routes, I may as well strike out on my own and hope people can catch up with me. A simple email conversation with Marcus Geduld this month led to his offer for me to work as assistant director, and after some deliberation, I chose to do it. It is great to be a part of a production again. What's difficult for me is being away from my own chance to act, fearing an opportunity will come up that will serve a conflict of interests. But deep-down this project I am hoping will help me mature as a producer and director, to put up my play Elemenopy respectably. I have had prior experience as a producer on other projects of mine, but I want to be able to do Elemenopy justice, and take it a notch more toward professionally produced--whether that be producing under Equity Showcase code, or an Off-Browadway production, or something totally beyond my ken. While I'm not sure how to shop around the script to appropriate producers, that is another path I hope to learn about.

I am excited about the reading of Breeders, which is on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday The play is about a group of people in an artists' colony, all of whom have taken an oath not to reproduce. My character, Chris, a young gay husband to a 40-year-old, is an actor frustrated by his desired to have a child who falls for his leading lady, a lesbian. One scary, vulnerable night, I get her pregnant, and we are forsaken from the colony as "breeders." That is only one storyline of the textured play, written by Bob Ost. Bob is president of Theater Resources Unlimited, a well-regarded producers' networking organization and sponsor of the reading series of which Breeders is a part.

If you wish to see it, here is the information for this free reading. There is a wine & cheese reception after it, following with a "Dollars & Sense" panel to talk about the commercial viability of the show:

Breeders, by Bob Ost
"A human comedy about reverse discrimination in a gay artists' colony ... and its consequences."
Monday, January 21st (MLK, Jr. Day)
8pm (show runs 90 min.)
Pantheon Theater, NYC
303 W. 42nd St.
FREE admission, but reservations required.
(212) 714-7628

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This new year so far has a lot of promise, and I hope work continues to build for me. When the clock struck midnight for 2001, I threw water out the window for good luck. 2001 sucked. This year, when the clock struck midnight, I threw Gatorade.

I hope that has some bearing!