..is a Chicagoan currently residing in Boston. He is a former newspaper reporter, editor and sportswriter. He also has been a bad slam poet, fiction writer, essayist, thin-skinned stand-up comic (three stage appearances) and a storytelling host and performer (appearing on the nationally televised storytelling program, Stories From The Stage).
His plays cover a wide variety of topics including four-play cycle examining Chicago gentrification from the viewpoint of four different race/ethnic groups , the plight of the retail worker, surviving racial trauma (from microaggressions to direct threats), and the subjectiveness of art. In addition, he has been commissioned to write two historical plays - an audio drama on Frederick Douglass and an outdoor "walking play" about a member of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment who fought in the Civil War (it was one of the first plays performed in the Boston area during the Pandemic).
He has never won an award for his playwriting but if anyone wants to change that...
Plays
A "dive" bar in Chicago faces change within and without as gentrification and the pressures it brings force truths to rise to the surface. A fight for survival. Part of a four-play gentrification cycle set in Chicago.
In 1955, Ruth Traveler is about to become a contestant on a game show. The first Negro contestant. They want her to make history. She just wants to win a refrigerator. A comedy about how society has trouble letting Black people just... be.
A look at the lives of a diverse group minimum wage workers in a national retail chain. Their experiences belie the friendly, "family" atmosphere the company often promotes as they fight for dignity and a decent wage. When one worker seeking to move ahead finds his dreams pushed aside, it inspires others to push for real change - a union.
Who "owns" a city? A play about gentrification and what gained and lost when old gives way to the new. Part of a cycle of four plays about gentrification set in Chicago and focusing on four groups - white ethnics, African Americans, Latino/Latinx, and Asian Americans.
A mother and son remember a pivotal point in their lives while cleaning out an attic.
On a Chicago subway train, two people debate the art of "selling" involving God and tube socks.
Successes
My audio play, "July 5th," about the life of Frederick Douglass and, in particular, the hours before his iconic speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July," has been made available to the public by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century.
My full-length play, "The F&L at 1330," was produced as part of Moonbox Productions' 2023 New Works Festival in Boston, Mass.
My 10-minute plays "Your Favorite," "And Then There's Aaron Burr..." and "The Annoying of Europa," were part of the Boston Theater Marathon in 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively.
My commissioned play, "The Charles Lenox Experience," was produced in 2020 by New Rep Theater in Watertown, Mass. It was one of the first full productions of the pandemic era in the area.
My Ensemble for the Romantic Century-commissioned historical play with music, "July 5," received a staged reading in Brooklyn, NY. in 2022.