ABOUT ME
Having begun my professional acting career when I was 42, I am sometimes confronted with an obligation to explain the reasons for a late beginning. This page seems like as good a place as any to lay that circuitous history out.
Most performing artists trace their beginnings to early childhood and I certainly can claim that. The problem was that I got off track as soon as I became socially aware. Basically all of my school years including college were devoid of performing or the awareness of that possibility. I grew up in the working class sports conscious small town of Point Pleasant, NJ in the 1970's and even though there was theater happening in our High School, for whatever reason, it was not on my radar.
Fast forward to college. TTU, Cookeville, Tenn 1975. Major: Wildlife Management. At the Student Lounge, before the showing of A Clockwork Orange I befriended an authentic looking hippie ten years my senior who lived on a nearby commune. From that evenings experience our friendship deepened and I was introduced to not only A Commune but a whole new way of seeing things. After that, as my mother would say, I was never the same.
Dropping out of college, reinvigorated with a new outlook on life and moving back, out of guilt, to my home town of Point Pleasant, I took a job as Grounds Keeper at my old high school. It felt like most people, especially teachers, were ashamed for me but I just internally laughed it off. I had no shame. I was seeing the world with a new lens.
When I was a football player in high school my high school English teacher and head of the Drama Dept, Will Dunkel, made me uncomfortable because he was extremely effeminate and very intelligent. Now I saw him differently. He appeared to me as someone I needed to get to know.
My former English teacher and I became very close friends and he managed to convince me to audition, even though I had no prior experience or interest, for an Alumni Production of Godspell that he was mounting over the summer.
I was cast as Stephen/Jesus and was bitten by the bug. From then on, for nineteen years I perforned in as many local area community theater productions as I could manage.
In 1999 my wife and I decided to make the commitment to do what we loved most and we moved to New York City starting from scratch with resumes that boasted no training or credible professional credits to speak of. Even though I clocked many years and hours treading the boards, that weak resume of mine made getting the first paid job unbearably difficult. Once I did procure that first job, rung by rung it seems my credibility rose and, if I can be objective, is still somewhat on the rise.