Breast cancer has had a defining impact on my life.  When I was 19 years old I met the family of the woman I was to marry.  Not long after that I learned that her mother had breast cancer.  Susan and I decided the next year we wanted to get married – it was 1965 – and neither family was particularly enthusiastic about the idea.  “The decision to let us get married I think was more about wanting Susan’s mother [Bertha Kalmans] to see her youngest daughter wed than thinking it was a good idea for two twenty-year old kids to get engaged.”   (The Actual Dance)

On August 23rd, 1966, Susan and I got married. And indeed, on August 4th, 1967, Susan’s mother passed away from her metastasized breast cancer. Shortly before our 1st Anniversary.   And it was later that same year that my mother, Frieda Simon, was diagnosed with breast cancer and five years after that on September 8th, 1973 that she passed away from a metastasis to her brain.

It was the Spring of 2000 when Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer. From the Spring of 2000 to the Summer of 2001 Susan’s diagnosis changed radically as the doctors tripped over themselves in expecting good news and finding increasingly bad news.  Then came the moment when everyone went dark and it became clear that the medical establishment expected Susan to follow her mother.

What was my response?  How did I spend that time and what did I do?  That is the story told in the play I wrote in 2012 and continue to perform.  The play, The Actual Dance is a theatrical presentation of my journey in the year 2000 with Susan as she went through her bout of advanced breast cancer.   It has now been presented about 170 times in front of nearly 2700 people, and it has become what “I do.” 

Let me say that it took me many, many years – about 12 – to understand the deep impact that the breast cancer experience with Susan had on me.  In retrospect, I wrestled with the experience in the deepest possible way.  It forced me to confront the most fundamental existential questions of life. What does life really mean? What is love?  “How do I do this? How do I dance the last, the actual dance with Susan?” (quote from the play) Something I couldn’t imagine doing and how I discover that “I can do this.” 

My own life journey has taken many turns.  I started my career in 1970 working with Ralph Nader as a lawyer. I was then in the army. I created a public affairs firm in Washington, DC and ran it for 25 years always thinking I was involved in activities that helped consumers and the public interest.  Even appearing periodically on shows like Face the Nation, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey and enjoying a profile in the New York Times as early as 1971.   Yet today as important or as impactful as any of that was, none of it feels as meaningful as this journey of taking this piece of performance art to audiences who once they experience the show seem themselves to be transformed.

My mission in life now is to take The Actual Dance to all those who need to see it; and to bring it in a way with the art, music and energy that will help others see and experience their own journey with breast cancer, or any cancer or life-threatening disease, differently. 

Breast Cancer Awareness Month calls me to “up my game” in this work and to join the effort to increase public awareness of this disease and to offer insights and links to perspectives that focus on what I now call “the other person in the room.”   That is people like me “the love partner” and that can be a spouse a child even just a friend. 

So, each day, as I have the past four years, I will blog about Breast Cancer Awareness.  I will attempt to offer a “stat” or some not well-known fact about Breast Cancer or Cancer itself. Suggest a task in honor of Awareness month, and then point to some resources or other organizations in the field. Indeed, this year I hope to focus a bit more on what others are doing.

Stats of the Day: According to breastcancer.org  in 2018 266,120 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the US, along with 63,960 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.  About 2,550 new cases of invasive in men in 2018. 

Task of the Day: Start the month off by performing your own breast exam and scheduling, if you have not done it all ready, a mammogram.  Here is a great little tutorial on You Tube that is suitable for all ages.

Resource of the Day: Here is a great resource for materials about Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  You can add something to your Facebook profile, a badge for your website, even draft letters asking members of your organization to take action! https://healthfinder.gov/nho/octobertoolkit.aspx

The Actual Dance:  Performances.   Donate
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You can follow these daily blog posts here.

This Blog was first published on July 26th by ​Amy Oestricher as part of her #LovemyDetour project here.

 October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.   The Actual Dance is, among many different things, about breast cancer. It is also about love.  It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things. 

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play.  (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 3:   THE ROLE OF THE HUSBAND

“My job is not to be the director.   My job is to be the supporter. “

This is how I express in the show my realization that despite a “desperate urge” to force Susan to explore doctors and treatment centers she had not considered that I needed instead to support her decisions.
This was among the most difficult moments for me, the “breast cancer husband” as it is sometimes called, in the early phases of her diagnosis and treatments.  

This issue came into clear focus this past February during a post-show discussion.   I was privileged to perform on February 28 at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, DC sponsored by Ralph Nader and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.  As one of the original Nader’s Raiders in the early 70’s I was delighted to welcome many of my former colleagues to a see my new life as playwright and performer of The Actual Dance.   After the show during our discussion Ralph asked if I hadn’t considered switching doctors.   A logical question except it assumed that this was my choice.   And it reflected I suspect clearly what I had communicated in the play about me wanting to find a magician doctor who would fix everything, now!

What the question did however is help me focus on that moment in our experience and what I think is among the most difficult elements of the breast cancer journey:  The role of the husband.   There will be more to say about this in coming days.  For now, I offer my insight that had I attempted to insist on my desire to run from clinic to clinic, doctor to doctor in search of some magic medicine I would likely have damaged our – Susan and my – relationship, and even worse, potentially added a level of stress to it that would have made her recovery more difficult.

In retrospect I am a bit astounded at my restraint.  It isn’t my style.   Perhaps because of how grim the diagnosis was at the time I deferred.  I recall it more as an intuition. It was however a very conscious decision because even today I can remember my internal struggle and urgent desire to do more. 

The question I will never be able to answer is this:  What if she had died, how would I have felt about not insisting on other or different medical treatment? 

STAT OF THE DAY:  “Breast cancer is a Couple’s Illness, not a disease of a wife’s breast”
Task of the Day:  Be Aware in October of the spouse, check in on the husband, it makes a difference. 

RESOURCE OF THE DAY:  I loved this little piece on 10 Ways to Be There When Your Wife has Breast Cancer by Perter Flier.  There is also a great study about depression in spouses of breast cancer patients.

In 1978, 37 years ago, I met Everett C. Parker as I entered a new field of consumer advocacy – Media Reform.    Everett Parker died this week at the age of 102!  Here is the link to the New York Times obituary.

Everett Parker changed America and the world by leading the movement to hold broadcasters accountable to the public interest.  Among many important accomplishments he dedicated his life to establishing diversity in the media and to open opportunities to minorities and women.  He understood and taught us that how news, art and programming is created makes a difference in the end-product.   It does matter if women and people of color are behind the camera, in the anchor chair or running the stations or even owning the stations.

The history of my relationship with Everett has taught me a lot about relationships, mentorship and love.    I suspect that at first blush many of those who have encountered The Reverend Dr. Everett Parker (see a full biography here) might find the use of the word “love” in describing this rather erasable fellow a bit odd.   But then probably not.

This is probably an appropriate time to mention my life before The Actual Dance.  I am fond of referring to my “work” today as playwright and author as my “fourth age.”   The “third age” being what is popularly referred to as what people do after they have retired or left their professional careers.  

My own career started as a lawyer (University of Texas School of Law, class of 1970) and working in 1970 with Ralph Nader in the public interest law firm called “The Public Interest Research Group” or PIRG.   After a stint in Army JAG and a law firm I returned in 1978 to take over an organization then called the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting (NCCB) at the request of Nader and Nicholas Johnson.  NCCB was a citizen membership organization devoted to “talking back to our telephone station” as Nick Johnson would call it.  NCCB had emerged based on the work of Everett Parker in challenging the license of broadcasters and establishing the rule that broadcast licenses were temporary grants to operate on behalf of the viewers and listeners and therefore viewers and listeners could challenge how the broadcasters operated.

So this is when I met Everett.  He wasn’t so happy to see this new guy on the block, a kid who really had no experience in communications advocacy and who was pretty good at getting on TV and his name in the paper just because Ralph Nader was involved.   I have to admit I was winging it!

Everett was testing me.  He wanted to be sure that I was not in this for myself; but rather for the sake of the cause.  It took me a good while to win his confidence.   What I find remarkable and therefore want to now focus on is how we ultimately ended up in what I like to call a loving relationship.   I was able to meet and get to know Geneva, his wife.  Everett, Geneva, Susan and I would occasionally connect in Washington after Everett retired and have dinner.  He was always concerned about our family and when Susan go sick (see, The Actual Dance) he would always make sure I was attending to her.

There was a time in my career where my work became controversial among some of those in the “public interest community.”   A lot of folks then (and still) see the world in “either or” terms, and my work seeking middle ground with business angered a number of advocates.   Everett however reassured me and urged me on, believing that more gets done with building bridges than digging trenches.   When the kitchen got hot for me I would often seek time with Everett who would not really turn down the heat as much as reassure me that it came with the territory and that I should stay the course and sweat it out.

There are many things that I am thankful to Everett for but the one that stands out is his introduction to Rev. Robert Chase, who was Everett’s third generation successor at the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ.  Everett somehow knew Bob and I would become great collaborators as we did and now deep friends.  Bob eventually become the founding director of Intersections, the social justice arm of the Collegiate Church of New York.  My “third age’ was to serve as a Senior Fellow at Intersections, where The Actual Dance was formed in collaboration with Artistic New Directions and others. 

So in some ways, I am here today writing this blog, performing this play, doing the work that I was meant to do because Everett Parker ended up loving me and supporting me and introducing me to Bob.

Thank you Everett.   I know I am not the only one who owes much of their own opportunity and success to his great spirit.  My hope is that I can be as generous and loving to others as he was to me. 

 

On July 18th I turn 70.

                For the first time my question on this “special birthday” is not about where I will be at the end of this coming decade, it is about IF I will be.

                It is natural at this particular milestone to be reflective about life’s journey and what it all means.   As I do so I realize that on July 18, 2015, seventy years into this journey, I am at a perfect moment in my time.

                 There are many facets of perfect as I do a three dimensional examination of my journey.  I struggle with the words as I want to catch just how deeply perfect my soul feels at this one moment in time and how grateful I am for all that has happened in my life.   I look forward to the next decade (or two) or how many or few years might be mine with the confidence that the process of “perfection” will continue.   I am not afraid of what will happen when I won’t be here anymore.  “I have come to understand that Life exists in each of us in a tangible form and that the essence of who we are beyond the physical body exists.” (All quotes from The Actual Dance). There is no doubt for me that the essence that is me will continue forever in some form in the universe and that it will be good. 

               My first inclination in taking the inventory has been to list perfection in a two-dimensional sense. My internal physical well-being and the external relational well-being with the external world.    For a seventy-year old, I’m doing pretty darn well.  Take a look, and everything inside right now is working just fine thank you!   Suffice it to say that I have performed The Actual Dance about 82 times now, most recently July 16th, 2015, and I have never missed a performance because of illness.   I stand on my feet and present the show for about 1 hour, and I love every second of it.                


         On the relational – second-- dimension of my life it too cannot get better.  Susan and I will be celebrating our 49th wedding anniversary on the 23rd of August of this year.   We met 51 years ago! (Though I “noticed” this “girl with curly black hair and big braces on her teeth 54 years ago” – see the play.

              0ur son, Marcus, just turned 45, is happily married to a wonderful woman who we consider also our daughter and has two fabulous children, Zachery and Emily.  Our daughter Rachel is 18 months younger than our son and has a husband whom we are pleased to consider our son.  Their two girls are a delight, Joanna and Sydney.  They are both also achieving all their own goals in their life –or so it appears to me.

               We, Susan and I, each have siblings and we all talk to each other, we share our life-cycle events with them and share a family love that is unconditional. We have great, and even great-grand, nieces and nephews and cousins.

               And Susan and I are comfortably situated to take care of ourselves financially through whatever remaining time we have.

               What could be better?  There is better.

               There is the third dimension.  The spiritual dimension.   It too is perfect at this moment, and I look forward to the process of further “perfection.”  In the course of the last few years as I have gone through a radical personal transformation, a gift of radical amazement, that has come to me through the process of writing and now performing The Actual Dance.  This process has led me to understand what love really means in a way that every day and in every interaction I experience a new and different level of that perfect understanding.   Perfect can get more perfect.   Love cannot be bottled because it cannot be contained, there is no end or fullness that cannot become even more or fuller.

               My gifts and transformations have come over a lifetime.  No one piece or experience without every other piece or experience would have enough to get me to today. The Actual Dance would not have been possible but for the time with my mother at the moment she took her last breath.  Nor would this moment have been possible without first having gotten ready to hold Susan as it appeared she might be taking her last breath.    All discovered through The Actual Dance.

               As I enter my 8th decade of existence, I am a different and transformed human being. The journey’s rough spots are not important – only that they too were necessary steps to today.  What I would like to do is acknowledge a few people who have had (and some continue to have) an important role in my journey to this perfect moment.  Of course everyone who “I have ever met, ever known, ever loved in my entire life” have had a role in bringing me to this place, so a thank you – you will know who you are if you read this.

               Of special thanks and acknowledgement because perhaps of the most unexpected ways you have touched my soul:

Susan Meryl Kalmans (that’s her maiden name) – who has taught me what love really means.  A soul mate that has endured all the different stages of the relationship with amazing devotion and continues to my life’s partner.

Frieda Alfman Simon:  My mother who allowed me to experience her life-force exit her body at her last breath.  It is with that experience I have garner the perfect belief that “life exists within each of us in a tangible form.”  

Marion Simon Garmel, Evelyn Simon Fox, Sylvia Sue Simon Pickens Owens, my still living siblings.   Each of whom have given me something special in our relationships and today share in daily study with each other of Torah.

Harriet Rae Simon, my sister who died at the age of 32, who taught me how to lose a sibling and still go on.

Ken and Ginny Goldberg.   Ken and I grew up with each other from about the age of 13.  He and Ginny got married a couple of years after Susan and me. I consider Ken my best friend.  They both have taught me what being a friend really means. They also taught me the hardest lesson in life; how to be present in the midst of the worst tragedy in life.  They let me hear a soul cry.  And to experience the journey to a new wholeness thereafter. 

Lynn Fielder. Lynn is a friend who has so deeply touched my inside that I don’t know how to acknowledge it fully.  A most totally unexpected and “random” (only if you believe that anything can be random) relationship.  We served on the board of directors of the World Institute on Disability together. Lynn taught me that there is a purpose to my life and that I could discover that purpose.   She taught me that God does not make mistakes, and everything we are – in her instance including her Parkinson’s disease -- is part of our purpose.  My real spiritual journey began with Lynn one day in 2001 at lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland, California.  Most importantly Lynn taught me to be “grateful for whatever I have, when I have it” because it may be gone tomorrow.

Rabbi Richard Sternberger. Rabbi Sternberger in life was the most not spiritual man you might ever meet. He was also among the most ethical and prophetic voices in America for four decades.   He also gave me the ultimate gift of letting me know about 6 days after I sat in his hospital room as he took his last breath that “everything is going to be okay.”

Ralph Nader. His impact on my life since I first worked for him in 1970 has been profound.  He has taught me what finding purpose looks like.  Most often from afar, but from time to time as closely as knee-to-knee – what love of family and tradition can feel like.

Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits.  If I had an older brother, it would have been Laszlo.  So, Susan’s oldest sibling is 16 years older than she, Laszlo is about the same relative to me.  He has allowed me to be a partner in his world in ways that have taught me deeply the ultimate value of every human life.   We have traveled and experienced places where no human being should have ever been and in a way that few people who weren’t there at that time get to experience. 

Marcus and Rachael Simon our children have blessed me (and Susan) with their gift of honoring us in the full ten commandment contextual meaning of that word “Honor.” 

Nadja Fidelia, whose gift of conversation about existential wrestling with God have helped stretch open my own spiritual container.   There are some conversations that we can imagine in our heads sometimes, and she has had those with me in the real world.  She has help me validate what I sometimes begin to doubt about my own experiences.

Gary Austin¸ the legendary improv teacher and founder of the Groundlings in Los Angeles.  An intimate relationship with Gary as teacher can be hard.  I describe it sometime as if I stuck my hand down my throat and turned myself inside out exposing every cell in my body to the brilliant light of the outside.   Wow it hurt so good!  It was Gary who offered,  “improvise a story, write it down and then perform it.”  It was his encouragement that brought me to find The Actual Dance.

Carol Fox Prescott.  Carol my first real acting teacher.  I discovered her through the Improv retreats sponsored by Artistic New Directions has been such an important part of my transformation and The Actual Dance.  Through “On the Breath” acting work I have learned how to find a place where “angels sing on rays of light and love pours fourth from the heart of the universe.”   Through years of her classes I have come to understand so many things differently, like “generosity.”  Not as money but as spirit and giving love to others.

Gabrielle Maisels, my dramaturg and acting coach was both a fellow student of Carol Fox Prescott and earned the blessing from Carol to lead “on the breath” classes. Gabrielle is a full partner in the development and pursuit of The Actual Dance.   Gabrielle in some many complicated and straight forward ways has kept me going on an unlikely journey.  She has guided me to the amazing and delightful place for me to be able to say and believe: “I am an actor and a playwright.”

There are many more people. Friends and colleagues particularly those discovered during this time of transition for me, such as Robert (Bob) Chase, at Intersections,  Carol Hexner part of the Values Roundtable that I worked with and Fred Johnson the amazing Fred Johnson, whose voice and heart are models for me, and I know more are so essential to my being “here” now. 

***

               So as I turn 70 – I find that I am at a perfect moment in my time because of YOU. Everyone mentioned and unmentioned.  Everything that has happened in my life I am convinced happened to bring me to this exact time and place and it is at this very instant Perfect.

               Thank YOU!

 

                The Actual Dance, the play, was 3 years old on July 1st, 2015 – an arbitrary date that I pick since the first “reading” was about mid-June in 2012.  Yet so many other things in my history are tied to July 1st, --- the day my son was born, the day I started working for Ralph Nader – I thought I would declare July 1st 2012 as the date that the first version of the play was “set.”  Easy to remember.

               Now, 3 years and 80 performances later, we have a new but not different ending to the show.  This script change originates from the need to address some audience confusion and discomfort that has been communicated from time to time and at sufficient levels that I now want to address it.  The question of “what happened next” hangs over what some have said is an abrupt ending of the storyline.  The journey from the hour long build-up to: “I am ready to hear the words. I can do this.”  To, “We, Susan and I, have not danced the actual dance.”   Happens too fast for some people and with no sense of what has happened since that time to Susan or me.

               As is so often the case this re-examination of the script happens at a fortuitous point in time.  In real life as I write this blog post Susan and I are reliving “Our Story”, taking refuge on our respective, but different,  planes of the same universe.   “It seems new, Susan,” I almost shout. “Pay attention to your body and what is going on. You have NOT had this before or at least for last 15 years, go see your own doctor now.”  I am really loud when I am adamant.

               “It is going to be fine, Sam. I saw a visiting doctor at work, and he gave me these prescriptions.  Everyone has it right now, stop worrying.”  Susan is stoic and adamant in our own confidence that everything is going to be just fine.

               This is all happening a full 15 years later, and Susan and I still live on different planes of the universe.   The point is that once someone you love confronts a near fatal diagnosis, it never really ends for you, does it.   You always wait and listen.   Do you really believe “everything is going to be just fine?” Of course not! Sorry readers of “The Secret,” the law of attraction doesn’t really work that way.  When you love someone who has almost died from disease you cannot pretend it did not happen, and you cannot stop thinking about it.  You can never clear the mind so completely that the thought isn’t right there on top every time your loved one isn’t feeling or looking perfect to you:  “Is it back?”

               Not long ago I wrote a blog and titled it: The Dance Never Really Ends.  That blog is about the rituals we keep in our lives after losing someone we love.   This blog today is about the never ending fear of losing someone once the potential of loss becomes real.    A classic “lose, lose” situation.     The ultimate truth is that confronting mortality of our loved ones changes everything in an instant, and there is no going back.   We learn how to live in those moments and to be grateful ultimately for every person in our lives when we have them.  It is not however about “living in the moment,” in the sense of not being fully aware of the past or fearing the future.  It is about being grateful for what we have when we have it, with full knowledge that it will change.  

               So the ending of “The Actual Dance” has some new words and more of the “story” comes out.  What I hope is clearer is that after a cancer diagnosis the story never “really ends.”  

RESOURCES:  For family members.  American Cancer Society.   For women.  Women Survivor’s Alliance

               In just under a month at 69 ½ years old I will walk on stage at Studio Theater in the Theatre Row complex on 42nd Street and 9th Avenue, just off Broadway.   I will perform The Actual Dance, a play that I wrote and I perform.  I hope you can be there.  The official opening performance is 8 p.m. January 10th. A small reception will follow.  You can get your tickets here.  In appreciation please feel free to use the friends and family discount code (TRTADFF), it will take $10.00 of the ticket price.

                A most unlikely journey for me, yet a journey that has transformed my life.   I have been fortunate in my career and my personal life to be involved in some extraordinary projects with exceptional people.   First of all, I am trained as a lawyer, not an actor nor a playwright.   I started my career with Ralph Nader, still a friend and mentor in so many ways, in 1970 with a small group of lawyers to launch what was known then as The Public Interest Research Group.  I got to work with people like Ralph, Joan Claybrook,  Donald K Ross , Mark Green and Tom Stanton  and about 9 others back when we were just 20-something years old.  Ralph, now 80, was only 36. It was heady times.  I can remember when Tom Stanton and I stayed up all night writing and research so we could sue President Nixon the next morning!

                For nearly 45 years it has been an explosive life filled with opportunities and activities all aimed at “changing the world.”  In that time I have had the chance to meet Ted Turner and participate in CNN’s launch (Trivia question:  what was the first debate ever on CNN and who participated?  Answer: It was CNN’s first week and it was on the issue of the “fairness doctrine” and the guests were Sam Simon and Shaun Sheehan). What a hoot to be the one who introduced Ralph Nader and Ted Turner. And then there was the dream of bringing people together in Washington by forming a public affairs firm that operated on the theory that there can always be common ground between different interests.  Our job was to facilitate that common ground.  I worked in what one newspaper called “the messy middle.”   In that process we were able to broker deals that have survive even today. Just this week the Federal Communications Commission renewed and revamped a program that has brought billions and billions of dollars for technology to schools. A program that was launched only after a deal between interests was negotiated in our offices. 

                Along the way, our firm launched the first internet campaigns for corporations and non-profit groups.  Thanks to the talented staff lead by Ken Deutsch, by then Vice-President and youngsters like Kenita Earl, we put both Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People``   (NAACP) on the Internet!

                My personal life journey has been equally exceptional.  I am blessed with a fabulous family.  I grew up in El Paso, Texas in the late 40’s early 50’s as a member of a very large family that squeaked by in life.  Somehow I went to law school and live a very comfortable life even in my “fourth age” in McLean, Virginia.   My son, Marcus Simon,  also a lawyer, was recently elected to the Virginia House of Delegates and my daughter, Rachael, is a partner in a thriving pediatric dental practice in Maryland.  They both live near us, each with two amazing children (our grandchildren).  I am not mentioning Susan, my wife of now of 48 years because she is the center of the story – the details of which require you to see The Actual Dance.

                Bragging?  Maybe, a little, more like feeling really fortunate.  At my age and comfort in life most people I think would say “Dayenu”  -- or that would be enough.  I offer these stories to paint a picture of just how big a shift this acting business is for me.  I have been interested in acting and theater. I did a little bit in high school and college, and beginning in 2001 I started training in improv through Artistic New Directions (AND) in New York.  With their generous encouragement I attended their summer Catskill retreats with teachers like Gary Austin, Kristine Niven, Jeffery Sweet, Michael Gellman and the amazing Carol Fox Prescott.   My work at the time was for personal development   I saw (and see) theater and improv in particular as highly valuable personal development tools.  Bring “yes and” into your daily life and see how the world will change for you. 

             Perhaps these early “ah ha!” moments from improv were precursors to the current journey.  The Actual Dance is auto-biographical.  It came out of encouragement from the acting teachers at AND to improvise a story, write it down and perform it.  

                The story that was in my head became the story of my heart.  Along the way of my incredible life story of doing things and thinking things there has been an unspoken part of feeling and believing.   Spiritual moments that I did not – or was afraid to – acknowledge.  In the retrospect of nearly 70 years, it feels to me like everything that has happened to me has happened for a reason.  The reason is to have written and perform and to being The Actual Dance to everyone who needs to see it

                 The show is the story of my heart and soul as I have had to engage in the existential moments of the people I love as they have faced their own mortality.  The impact of the expression and the art of the show – The Actual Dane -- has taken me by surprise.   It never occurred to me as I was writing it that when people see it performed -- I like to say “experience the show” -- they are transformed in their own lives.  Yet it happens over and over again.  

                Most recently after a performance in the Indianapolis Fringe Festival while standing outside between shows a man in his late 40’s or early 50’s and his wife walked up to me.  They said they had seem my show on the opening night and they wanted to thank me.  The husband said that “how I support my wife and how we relate to each other has been changed forever and I wanted to thank you.”  

                I now live for those moments. It is what I do and hope to do for as long as I can. After now over sixty performances I also am changed by each experience.    “I now know why my wife reacted to my cancer.”  “My entire family and I are able now to reframe our experience with our loss.  Thank you.”  Ways I cannot imagine and with love expressed so deeply the audiences for The Actual Dance give me an incredible gift.

                When asked today “what do you do” I no longer say I am a lawyer or a businessman or an advocate nor “retired.”   I say I am an actor and performer.  Who would have thought?!

                So, New York, come join me on this journey.   Take a chance that your life will be transformed and enjoy a night of theater just off Broadway this January.  Join us opening night or at any of week-end performances.   Then during our discussion, held after each show, tell me how your life is changed.  www.theatrerow.org