(Updated 10-29-2024)
As of this update (early fall, 2024), I am directing Jean Genet’s The Maids for the Rock River Players in Williamsville Hall and the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Bratt. I played “Madame” in The Maids nearly a dozen years ago at the Hooker-Dunham. This time I’ve ceded the on-stage drama to three terrific women who’ve dedicated themselves to this project.
For the past 15 years, I’ve lived in South Newfane, Vermont. I ran the Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery in Brattleboro, VT for seven years. My goal was to keep the place alive as a space where people could express their creativity — and to have some fun myself. It worked out amazingly well. We were able to be productive when we couldn’t have audiences and won a couple awards for a series of solo performances videoed and distributed online and over our local public television station.
If you’re curious, you can check out my performance of T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in Episode 2 of the eight-part series.
In June 2022, I created a Bloomsday dramatization video and event held at the Brattleboro Public Library and aired online and on local TV. Like Bloomsday celebrations around the world, the event celebrates James Joyce’s Ulysses.
I have a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from NYU. I’m an emeritus prof of Clinical and Community Psychology at the State University of New York. I was Visiting Professor of Education and Psychology at Marlboro College for a couple years when we first moved up here.
I served a three-year term as chair of the Newfane Selectboard, right when Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011. Though there was much frustration, I wouldn’t say the job was thankless. I got tremendous support from the people of Newfane.
I was an undergraduate at U.C., Berkeley, at the height of civil rights, anti-war, communal/ hippie era . After I got a doctorate at NYU, I took off to Chile, doing volunteer work in support of the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende, as his coalition of parties of the left tried to transform Chile into a socialist society. I was back in the US, when, on September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet brutally crushed those aspirations.
For more than twenty years I was a member of a group in NYC variously called “The Sullivan Institute,” “The Fourth Wall,” or, usually pejoratively, “The Sullivanians.” We performed theatre in the East Village, supported demonstrations with street music and theater, drove around all night monitoring radiation levels near nuclear power plants, made films and lived an unconventional communal life-style. A few years after the experience, I put together my thoughts in this essay. I continue to refer to that essay if anyone wishes to know what I think.
I have a lovely wife, three terrific sons, five delightful grandchildren, and a wonderful dog, Mucca.
