I’m so excited this show is happening in July at the Kraine Theatre! I got to work directly with Martin on creating this piece. You can read a bit about the process on Adam Szymkowicz’s excellent blog. Martin gives his thoughts on being the subject of this on his blog. I am so glad he has trusted me with his story.

I’m getting to work with some of my favorite people. My partner in life and art Aimee Todoroff is directing. The very wonderful clown Marisol Rosa-Shapiro will join me onstage to bring all the characters to life. Matthew Fischer will be doing our sound and lighting designs. Frequent ERD collaborator Barbara Davidson will be doing the costumes and Manny Rivera will be the stage manager. I’m so happy to work again with Emily Owens as our press rep.

What will the show be like? Well, I like to describe it as what might happen when a comedy double act does a storytelling slam. Marisol and I will be playing Martin Denton and Rochelle Denton, who are going to be playing the other characters. (I once worked with a lighting designer who said he stopped counting the levels of reality in something I wrote when he got to five before the end of the first page. I think I keep this one down to only three or four.) It is set the week when they moved out to New Jersey in the fall of 2014.

It won’t be a documentary of theater in the last 20 years, though some of that will be covered in this. The good people at Decades Out have already been working on the definitive doc on downtown NYC theater. It also won’t be an evening of impersonations.

This will be a piece of theater that tells Martin’s story. There will be some allusions to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town for reasons that are explained in the show as well as some inside jokes and a few indie theater tropes layered throughout.

My 15th anniversary in NYC is coming up this August. It is amazing to me how much the city has changed in that time. That’s the length of five generations in theater years! One thing that remained reliable through most of that time was Martin Denton. For people who know him, I hope this will bring up good memories. For those who don’t, I hope this will give you an idea of the impact of his work.

It runs July 6 to 23. Tickets are $20 and $25. You can get more details on the Elephant Run District website. Or, you can go ahead and order your tickets here.