Looking Back at 2025

Since 2012, I have taken a moment at the end of the year, and posted a sort of year-end-update here on the website. This serves as a kind of archive for me as well as  away to celebrate the year that was. 

By the way, for those curious, here is a list of years gone by... 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 

2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

2025 was a year of stabilization, which was a positive change considering last year. 2024 saw some big highs (winning Outstanding Production at a big theatre conference) and deep lows (being unemployed for the last nine months of the year). So, here's a glance back at 2025...

The year got off to a decent start after the slog of the previous year. I had a college class to teach twice a week, though it was ass-early in the morning at a high school. I was grateful for it. That meant I could at least cover my part of rent and fill my gas tank up (once) each month.

In mid March, I also had a directing gig at the college I worked at. It was the same production that had been cancelled the previous semester due to low audition turn-out. It was a goddamn slog of a rehearsal process. I had to remove a cast member due to lack of enthusiasm and missing a substantial number of rehearsals. Another cast member was as unenthusiastic and downright surly as I have ever encountered. There was barely enough backstage crew to run the show (myself and the faculty ended up helping backstage during the run). One of the musical numbers was so difficult that I wrote myself into the show to alleviate the pressure on the young lady who had to do it (who stepped in to cover the original girl who was removed).

I Angered A Great God at TCC-SE

I Angered a Great God at TCC-SE

The play was called I Have Angered a Great God. It was my own full-length adaptation of a one-act I had directed back in 2010 for Austin's Frontera Fest and the Out of the Loop Fest in Addison. It had musical numbers and was a language-dense comedy. Since it was an old piece of mine (that I had somewhat grown past) and the premise was so silly (a woman angers a Great Tiki God. She retraces her steps over the past few days to see where things went so horribly, horribly wrong. This task might be easier if she weren’t constantly, obliviously, on her phone). It proved to be difficult for the skeletal student cast and crew. The final result wasn't embarrassing, but a lot was "left on the field" so to speak.

Anyway, it was not a fun experience. It was something to get to the end of. When the end of the semester arrived and I was told I would not be considered for directing the next school year, I finally decided it was time to move on from that college adjunct job that had been worsening for years (certainly since the pandemic). Perhaps the decade and half chapter of my life spent as an college adjunct instructor was coming to an end...

Another opportunity popped up. My friend Jeff approached me about stepping in to replace him at an institute he had been working at since the previous autumn. He was a Performing Arts Instructor at a place that taught vocational and life skills to young adults with autism. Though I had one foot out of education I decided to interview for the gig. the position was adjacent to a lot of skills I had. Jeff moved on to his next adventure in mid-May. I jumped in.

Admittedly, it is nice to have an actual office for a change...

My co-workers all seemed cool. The students (called "crew") were okay. As is the case with many of the places I have worked, there were folks who were as unpleasant as the high schoolers I had been teaching (just in completely different ways), but also like every other place I've taught, I encountered some really good students (and people). It has been a learning curve dealing with several consistently challenging, high-bandwidth types. Though I had prior experience in the past instructing various special needs students, this was the first time I was at an institute that was exclusively tailored to individuals with autism. It has been an education on my part getting familiar with folks up and down the spectrum. 

I had to revamp Jeff's curriculum. Though very experienced with performing and with teaching youth drama, he has no experience in formal academic education. Nearly everything he had created had to be fixed/ altered. To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed the challenge of creating curriculum. It proved, however, to be a massive amount of work - and continues to be - and therefore a huge expenditure of energy and focus. The aim was crafting instructional materials somewhere below full college-level, but high enough to touch on a lot of the basics of performing and the accompanying soft skills such as active listening, collaboration, emotive responses and so on. And to give it a practical, vocational bent, veering away from a lot of history and theory.

This was "tropical shirt day" which happened to fall on my birthday

After nearly twenty five years I was once again working a consistent full-time 9 to 5 desk job. Weird to think my many jobs over the years have mostly had non-traditional hours. The salary allowed me to refill the coffers I had depleted from my savings in 2024. At the time of this writing, I am going to stick with the job and see where it goes.

The trade-off has been the amount of time and energy this new gig has siphoned from me. Almost all of my creative pursuits ground to a halt. Turns out that spending the entire day doing difficult things five days a week is not good for artistic achievement. Not much concentration and creativity left in the tank by the end of the day. My goal moving forward will be working on a better work/life balance. Or maybe, better said, work/creativity balance.

Throughout the summer, I did fulfill obligations I had set up in the spring. I performed my solo show Robert's Eternal Goldfish for senior care facilities. My friend and colleague Holly Bagwell set up the gigs for me. It was a new experience. People slipping in and out of sleep but then praising the show afterwards.

I also took that solo show to the St. Louis Fringe and the Theatre Crude Fringe in Oklahoma City. I did not really make an impact in Missouri or Oklahoma. I still enjoyed performing the show and I had some lovely feedback in both places, but something felt like it was missing. These trips seemed a pale reflection of the old days of drive, seeking out fellow artists, seeing a bunch of other shows and making the whole thing into a grand adventure. I saw a handful of other shows at each fringe, but the interesting stuff seemed few and far between. Nothing really blew my hair back.

Performing Robert's Eternal Goldfish at 2025 Theatre Crude Fringe

I fear that the chapter of my life that has me performing my solo shows at venues and festivals all over North America is gradually closing. I generally think change is good. And these things never really have a hard stop, but overlap and slowly phase out. I feel writing and/or drawing will be the next stage of artistic output for me in the coming years.

I also had a few interactions with other artists. In May I was the interview subject of the Playwright's Spotlight Podcast. There are a few bon mots, but the questions were kind of all over the map. You can watch it on YouTube... HERE.

Reading from Shaun Hamill's book Dissonance at Cake & Prose

In mid-October I also was invited to be a reader in one of the Writer's Garret Cake & Prose evenings. I read an excerpt of Shaun Hamill's kids-on-bikes horror fantasy Dissonance. It was fun to get to know a great local author.

Throughout the year I still created J. Herbin comics, though I got a bit behind towards the end of the year. I also released a few Cultivated Playwrights podcasts. I made preliminary progress on several bigger projects, but my current work schedule has stymied the deep work I need to do to really get into the projects.

It feels like things are going to be on the up and up next year. I still have the goal of removing myself from dependence on income outside of my own control. This should be easier without debt and with the savings accounts restocked. I am cautiously optimistic of what the next year will bring. I aim to make my life a wonderful adventure. I expect ups and downs, but I want to be able to look back and say that the time was well-spent. I want to have something to show for the effort, you know.

Thanks for reading this far, if you have. That's a wrap on 2025. I have tentative plans (when I make solid plans, the universe usually laughs in my face) and I expect to complete a few big things. I want to resurrect my new YouTube channel. Maybe launch an Etsy page. We'll see. Time and energy will be the big deciding factors. Onward and upward.

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Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occasionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...

Looking Back at 2024

For the last decade (plus) I have been putting together a year-in-review here on the website. This look back is mostly to take stock of the past year and serve as a kind of archive for me. 

By the way, for those with the tiniest bit of inquisitiveness, here is 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. 

2024 was NOT the best year ever. It seemed to start strong, but went downhill a few months in and just kept going. Here's 2024 in a nutshell...

Things started out pretty good. My folks took mine and my sister's family to Black Bear, Colorado for a ski vacation. First time I'd been skiing since I was a kid. First time for my son. It was really fun and I remembered how much I really like skiing.

Me and the fam on the slopes - Loveland Ski Area, Colorado

I directed my friend Jeff Swearingen in my one-man show The Beast of Hyperborea at the Theatre Network of Texas' TEXFest in late February. We figured it'd be a good excuse for us to have an old-school theatre adventure together. So he acted, I did... well, everything else.

TEXFest was a large-ish conference held February 21 -25 in Victoria, Texas. Traditionally, a sort of showcase of community theatre offerings, the organization set out to widen its reach a bit and my little indie company, Audacity Theatre Lab, became a participant. I submitted The Beast of Hyperborea and it was accepted as one of several productions from around the state. I figured an auditorium filled with community theatre board members, staff and artistic leaders would be a great place to show off the play. I believe it to be quite producible for small theatre organizations and eventually want to get it published and out into the world.

I was also taking a series of "adjudication" classes and was required to watch and evaluate every production over the weekend. Additionally, I was teaching two workshops about solo performance at the conference. And of course, I wanted to take a workshop of two myself, just as a participant. Needless to say, it was ridiculously busy.

Leading a Solo Performance workshop at TEXFest 2024

Trouble started just as we got to Victoria. Completely unprompted and randomly, our original hotel gave away our rooms before we arrived, seemingly unaware of how reservations work. Thanks a heap, Candlewood Suites. We moved across the street to a Holiday Inn Express. Jeff stayed away from everything and holed up in the hotel room, running lines on his own. So, I represented and managed to show up to all the things I needed to show up for and was social and networky.

The show went well and was appreciated by an overwhelming number of the conference participants. It won a bunch of awards and Jeff won an acting award. We even got a taste of small-town/ community theatre "drama" when some disgruntled person from one of the shows that did not advance started a rumor we were "ringers" specially invited to the conference.

Victoria, Texas proved to be deep in Trump-country, which is 180 degrees from me and Jeff's own political leanings. Made the vibe of the town feel oddly uninviting and antagonistic. We went into one BBQ joint and they had "Trump" money on the walls and played NewsMax on the TVs. The barbeque was not at all good enough to make up for it.

Jeff and I at TEXFest 2024, Victoria, TX

When we won the Best Production Award, we were slated to advance to the next level of Texas Network of Theatres' conferences that would take place in Little Rock, Arkansas in Early April. Jeff, who doesn't do much stage work nowadays and is focused on film projects, could not commit to another performance. He was also not taken with the community theatre feel of the conference or the super-Conservative vibes of Victoria. I decided to allow The Beast of Hyperborea to advance, knowing I would need to learn the part as well in case Jeff dropped out on me at the last minute. I did learn the part just in case Jeff bailed, rehearsing on my own. Though I am glad I was prepared, it was a lot more work than I wanted at the the time.

My hope was that by presenting the play to so many community theatre folks at one time, the piece might be of interest for other theatres to do. unfortunately, Jeff and I did well enough that we ended up kinda scaring off potential future producers. one fellow participant flat out told me that nobody would be able to do the play because they just didn't have a creative team like me and Jeff (me as director/ jeff as the performer). This was the opposite of what I wanted to to happen 

Meanwhile, back in north Texas, I was rehearsing Enterprise by Brian Parks at the college I work at. It had a student cast and crew. Enterprise is a fast-paced comedy about corporate workers caught up in a sinking system. I had originally planned to do Parks' play Goner, which I had directed for Audacity back in Spring of 2003. Unfortunately, it proved to be way too politically incorrect to be done at a community college in 2024. I read a bunch of other plays and Parks himself sent me several other of his works to read. Enterprise was one of them. He writes really fast, really sharp and biting satires. I am a big fan of his work. However, what sometimes worked in fringe or indie theatre twenty years ago doesn't always work in contemporary educational theatre settings.

The student cast of Enterprise by Brian Parks at TCC-SE in Arlington, TX

In early April (4th thru 6th) Jeff and I drove to Little Rock for the South West Theatre Conference. It was singularly weird trip. Little Rock had lots of road construction and one-way roads that made driving around it like navigating an M. C. Escher painting. Our hotel, out by the airport was architecturally bizarre with rooms that had entry doors on each end. Jeff had a free breakfast buffet. I, however, who had the same kind of room, arbitrarily did not receive the free breakfast treatment. If I wanted it, I'd have to pay $15.

This was eclipse weekend as well. Older retirees with RVs and high-powered photo-telescopic lenses on their cameras would continually start conversations with me every time I got in the elevator. The conversation always about the upcoming eclipse. If not retirees, then it was stage moms. There was a kid pageant event in the hotel, so the lobby and other public spaces had young girls covered in too much make-up practicing dance routines under the overbearing eye of their moms or guardians. And every pageant mom I encountered filled the stereotype brilliantly. Everyone was so harsh and brutal with their daughter. The whole place was just weird.

The South West Theatre Conference ended up being a roughly thrown together showcase for the theatre companies that advanced from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas. There was one workshop, on swing dancing. Not much else. The only attendants were folks associated with the productions that were there. There was a vibe of scoping out the competition rather than a convivial social atmosphere. 

Jeff and I showed up to tech - the first group to tech - and they were still figuring out where to put the companies' set pieces. The light and sound booth operators - supplied y the conference - were chatting and on their phones. Once I got the tech started for BoH, I thought everyone was on the same page. They were not.

The Beast of Hyperborea went as the first production of the whole weekend. Not ideal. I don't think the organizers planned it that way maliciously, but the first production sets the bar for the rest of the productions. Jeff and I sort of thought maybe because we did so well at TEXFest, they were gunning for us a bit, putting us in the opening slot to take us down a peg. Jeff did a decent job in the show. Not as good as he had performed the piece in Victoria the month before, but not embarrassing by any stretch. The lights and sound were way off however. The booth operators seemed oblivious that the show had started. I am not sure if the messed up cues counted against us, but it was irksome.

Jeff on stage in The Beast of Hyperborea at SWTC in Little Rock, AR.

We did not win best production this time. Instead a group we had beat in Victoria won. I was mixed on the outcome. It was not as clear that we had a superior production as it had been in Victoria, and the other group had made a few improvements to their production. And I liked the main actor of that production a lot. However, they were a bit overly smug about their victory at this conference. It bothered Jeff tremendously and I heard about it endlessly from him for the rest of the trip... how we had been "good ole boy-ed" by these people who all knew each other.

I personally thought it was just an unfortunate turn of events and didn't begrudge the group who won. If we had done a bit better ourselves and the tech crew had been on point, I may have cared more. 

I returned after Little Rock to jump into tech for Enterprise. The show went well. The actors eased into it by the end of the run and the technical crew gradually got on top of the amazing number of cues (each scene ends with a sharp blackout).

At the Titanic Museum in Branson, MO

After that things seemed to slow down for a while over the summer. My folks once again treated mine and my sister's families to a vacation. This time to Branson, Missouri. It was fun to be with the family, even though Branson is not quite my vacation hot-spot. We saw some good shows and ate too much junk food.

Deep dish pizza in Chicago

After Branson, Ruth and the kid and I drove up to Chicago. I made an appointment with Enzo Custom to get measured for a custom suit. What I did not anticipate was road construction and the traffic in downtown Chicago. Plus it was raining heavily. I missed the appointment. The next day, we did walk around Chicago visiting Navy Pier, the Lincoln Park Zoo and the big Bean sculpture. We ate deep dish pizza (vegan for the boy and wife).

We then drove up to Minnesota. We went to Snake Discovery, a small reptile "zoo" that David followed on YouTube. We stayed for hours and he even met the gal who does the YouTube videos. He then drove into Minneapolis and had dinner with my old college friend Phil Gonzales and his family. The weather was wonderful and it was really good to catch up.

Catch up with Phil and his family in Minneapolis

We made out way home with a stop for the night in Kansas on the way.

I flew back to Chicago for a weekend on my own about two weeks later and did go get measured for a custom suit from Enzo. The whole experience was quite a hassle and more expensive than originally anticipated, since I had to fly back and get a hotel and so on. This on top of the cost of the suit itself ($1,200).The suit arrived at the end of the summer. It was okay. I expected more from a made-to-measure suit. But now I have at least one medium grey suit that fits me, more of less properly.

In mid-June I published a Spanish-language version of I Brough Home a Chupacabra. I was very grateful to have Frida Espinosa Muller of Cara Mia Theatre Company help me with the translation. She and I worked together ages ago along with her now-husband David Lozano. So now, an ebook version of Traje Un Chupacabras a Casa is available on Amazon.com.

Get a copy... HERE

Jeff and I were scheduled to perform at the Omaha Fringe festival, a pace we had taken BoH the previous year. However, on the morning we were set to leave, August 8, I received terrible news. My mother-in-law had passed away. She had some sort of heart issue and died suddenly. I had a quick call to the Omaha Fringe and a quick discussion with Jeff and we decided he'd drive up on his own and represent us. Hotel reservations had already been made and we did not want to let down the fringe at the last minute, if it could be helped.

The show we were taking was a theatrical version of our Fun Grip Improv sets. We called it the Fun Grip Inventium. Jeff performed with some local improvisers there in Omaha. He filled them in on the format. Apparently, it went well. I was pleased with him stepping up to represent as he did.

I, of course, stayed behind. As one would expect Ruth was shattered. There was a lot to do. With my mother-in-law's passing. It cast a pall of sadness over the tale-end of the year. She was a great lady and her passing definitely left a hole in a lot of lives.

In early August, I was invited to be a surprise "Mystery" show ta the 2024 Festival of Independent Theatres. I performed Robert's Eternal Goldfish at the downstairs space at Theatre Three in Dallas. There was few audience members (especially since I did not have but a few days to promote it), but the it went well enough that I was invited back as another "Mystery" show two days later the same weekend.

Performing Robert's Eternal Goldfish at the 2024 FIT, Dallas TX

In early September (6th - 8th), I performed The Beast of Hyperborea at the Ft. Worth Fringe. Up until about three weeks out, Jeff was set to perform it. He had to bow out due to other commitments, so I stepped in. I had not performed it for an live audience myself since 2019. It is a difficult show. However, it went fine. I may perform it myself again sometime down the road.

Performing The Beast of Hyperborea at the 2024 Ft. Worth Fringe

In late August I was set to direct a play I had been working on all summer at the college I work at. Back in May I read maybe 25-30 plays trying to find something that would fit  the limitations of the coming year. There were very few students signed up for the production class, so a very small cast-size show. The Technical Director left so, the show would have to be easy as far as scenery and tech. The other director was considering maybe a thriller and or a horror play, so I needed to stay away from that. My personal bent is towards the funny and weird. After reading over two dozen plays, I decided I'd just write one with two to four characters.

After a few false starts I found an old one-act I had done back in 2010. It was called I Have Angered a Great God. With a little finagling, I expanded the core idea of the play into a full-length script.

I was glad to have the production to direct since none of the classes I had to teach made in the fall (and the one that did was snatched up by a full time faculty member whose own class hadn't made... adjuncts ALWAYS are the bottom of the totem pole, ALWAYS).

Auditions were held the week after school started. I needed four actors to cast the show. One showed up to audition. Apparently, all the student who would have acted in the production had gotten seasonal work at the Six Flags Amusement Park working in haunted houses and so on. 

Instead of finding an alternative to do, or even considering my suggestion that we do some short solo student shows and combine it with me doing Robert's Eternal Goldfish, my fellow faculty decided to just not do a production during the first part of the fall. At the time, it really felt like a kind of betrayal. I had moved metaphorical mountains for this group at the school in the past. Now, I was cast aside. This left me high and dry. No classes. No directing gig. No income.

Besides what little I had made with the performing gigs over the summer, I had no substantial income from May until the end of the year. Hard times. 

By this point I was burnt out and depressed. My mother-in-laws passing, the disappointment of no gigs at the college led to a steady decline in overall motivation. This was also probably due to the difficulty of the projects at the beginning of the year, too, which had caught up with me. I stopped going to the gym. And because I was living on fast-dwindling savings, my social life also slowed to a near-stop as well.

The end of the year was bleak. In November we held a memorial service for Ruth's mom. 

The holidays were fine. A bit lack-luster, but that was probably because of my general mood.

During the fall I tried to rally. I took a long look at my own resources. I figured it was time to start making my income separate from any given institution. I'd need to generate my own income somehow and I'd have to do it from home. I was a stay at home dad since my wife still insisted on home-schooling the boy. This meant that I could not go out and just find a McJob to get by since we'd then have the added expense of child care costs without me home to watch him.

I redesigned my website. I started pouring energy into a new YouTube channel and made an "email magnet" (free content for joining my mailing list) to grow my email list. I watched a lot of tutorials of how to be an independent content creator. My subject would be theatre, with a focus on solo performance. The trouble being that I do not think there is super high demand for this in the online world. Theatre is pretty niche and can't be digitalized easily. It is, however, one of my strengths, so I persevered. Only way to know for sure is to really try and really fail.

The learning curve was steep and only over the last little bit have I started putting together a tangible plan of what to sell and how. The website redesign took a long time. So did the email magnet ebook I put together. The YouTube channel stumbled out of the gate. It has definitely been slow going.

That about wraps up the year. I am looking ahead to brighter days in 2025. I have renewed optimism and a goal of removing myself from dependence on income outside of my own control. As I am writing this, the New Year just passed and I feel the creative recharge activated. The gym calls to me once again. Upwards and onwards.

Just, thank the Universe, 2024 is finally over.

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Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occasionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...

Leave a comment. If you are a robot or a blatant marketer trolling Blogger, then you will be gleefully deleted. Humans only, please.

Looking Back at 2023

For now over a decade I have been composing a year-in-review here on the website. This look back is mostly to take stock of the past year. 

By the way, for those even mildly curious, here is 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022). 

2023 was the first year in a while where I feel I got back up to a reasonable degree of projects and productivity. The pandemic is enough in the rear-view, my kiddo is now old enough to occupy himself for swaths of time and I got back a degree of excitement that I hadn't had in several years. This coincided with a renewed interest in my health and a return to hitting the road throughout the year. Here's 2023...

Right off the bat, I started the year with an new, ongoing project. I returned to webcomics with The Ongoing Saga of J. Herbin. My last stab at webcomics was Donnie Rocket Toaster-Face, which lasted from 2010 to 2015. I published a small collection of those comics... HERE. 

J. Herbin was an idea I have been kicking around for years. Heavily inspired by David Lynch's The Angriest Dog in the World and Max Cannon's Red Meat, I decided to go all in and publish a weekly "anti-comic." What I mean by anti-comic is that each 3-panel strip features no movement or physical gags. the protagonist (if you can call J. Herbin that) is passive and unresponsive. All dialogue takes place off-frame by unseen speakers. The reader only gets  a small glimpse of the conversation taking place and there is seldom a punch line in the traditional sense.

click the image to see it larger...

Like DRTF, the habit of coming up with a comic each week and releasing it was been a good exercise throughout 2023. As of this writing, I have completed over a year's worth of these J. Herbin comics. I intend to keep going as long as I find the project interesting and engaging. Read them... HERE.

I also approached a comicbook artist named Paul Milligan. The delightful David Hopkins made introductions. Paul and I are collaborating on adapting my solo show The Beast of Hyperborea into a graphic novel. It took me several months at the start of the year to adapt the play into comicbook script format. Paul has been a great sounding board throughout the process. Progress has been slower than expected due to a number of setbacks, but he and I are still on it. As of this posting Paul has sent me roughs up to page 44 (out of an expected 74 page volume). It was hoot to reimagine this story visually and work with Paul on character concept drawings. More updates as the project proceeds.

In January, I also formatted my children's picture book Petey Gale Goes Up and Beyond into a Kindle ebook version. The paperback version that I created for my kiddo back during the pandemic had been out since the end of 2021. Just trying to make the book a little more accessible and get some more mileage out of the work I have already completed. Grab a copy... HERE.

DaShaun Ellis' I'm Thinking

In February, I directed two student-written ten-minute plays at the college where I work. They were submitted for  an annual presentation called the Festival of New Plays. The plays I directed included Blake Roper's The Friendship Application and DaShaun Ellis' I'm Thinking. They had a student cast and crew and went over nicely. Both playwrights were responsive to feedback to make their scripts more stage-worthy and the process, I felt, was overall really constructive.

In March I created a website dedicated to my playwriting endeavors (as opposed to this Blogger portfolio covering a range of activities). It was a rather expensive investment. I am not sure I will break even on the endeavor of creating the site, registering the domain name and so on, but for the next several years at least, I will appear as a professional playwright. This is part of a larger effort to present myself more professionally. I have spent years improving the quality of my theatre work, but I feel like I am starting at the beginning as far as getting the word out about my work and actually getting productions of my plays (outside me own self-directed projects).

Robert's eternal Goldfish at the 2023 Tyler Texas Fringe

In June I took my solo show Robert's Eternal Goldfish to the Tyler Texas fringe Festival, a small event on the campus of Tyler Junior College. The show went over quite well despite the fact that I presented it in such a bare-bones lights-up/lights-down fashion. This was not just the nature of the fest (not altogether organized), but because it did not offer a stipend or box office cut. My hope was that I might be able to network a bit and meet some new colleagues, perhaps set up future opportunities. Time will tell.

Travel kicked in starting in August. My good friend and colleague Jeff Swearingen used to travel around the country presenting theatre and improv at different venues and festivals. Between 2005 and 2013, in particular. This past summer we picked up where we left off and set off on a few far flung theatre adventures.

Swearingen in The Beast of Hyperborea at the 2023 Omaha Fringe

Our first stop was in Nebraska for the 2023 Omaha Fringe Festival. This rather new fest started during the pandemic and is still getting its feet under it. We took my show The Beast of Hyperborea. I created the show back in 2019 and performed it myself originally. I thought it would be a good fit for Swearingen in the role of the Edward Joseph Reade, the reluctant narrator/accountant of the show. I did all the behind the scenes stuff and directed/worked tech. 

We road tripped out and stayed in a hotel with a nice patio. The show played at the beautiful Benson Theatre and it went well. During the days we saw other shows and the cool evenings, away from the oppressive Texas summer, were filled with long chats over drinks and cigars (well, for me, and cigarettes for Swearingen). The show went well despite low attendance.

Swearingen in The Beast of Hyperborea at the 2023 Elgin Fringe

In September, we headed off again with The Beast of Hyperborea. This time we flew. The festival was the Elgin Eringe and it is one of my favorites. Elgin, Illinois is 35 miles northwest of Chicago. This was my third time in Elgin (previously performing solo with Robert's Eternal Goldfish in 2018 and Cyrano A-Go-Go in 2019) and I appreciate the people there who run it, particularly Erin Rehberg and Tanner Melvin of Side Street Studios. Again, we had great weather, talked shop with some other fringe folks, saw a few shows and presented a kick-ass show. Our venue couldn't have been more different than the large hall we were in the month prior in Omaha. In Elgin we were in an upstairs gallery space. Jeff did the show for folks scattered around him in folding chairs.

Before I left for Elgin, I had started the school year, teaching again. Since before the pandemic I have been stationed off-campus at some high school of another teaching "college level' theatre to "dual credit" high school freshman. I dislike it more and more. I left teaching high schoolers ages ago to teach at the college level. The last several years, however, as numbers of in-person classes even making has diminished, I find myself a college teacher in name only. Stationed at one high school after another to students who went from elementary to high school online, during Covid, I am continually frustrated by both the state of the education system and the collective interest level/intelligence of the students. Phones are part of the problem, but on the whole, they just aren't very good at being students these days. This makes my job harder. I have to dumb the material down bit by bit and make allowances so the majority of the class doesn't fail (i.e. rolling deadlines, ample extra credit, lay-up assignments so they can have grades every six weeks, etc.).  I am hoping 2024 is my last year teaching and I move on to doing something where I am not operating so far below my potential.

Volume of Smoke at TCC-SE

After Elgin I did direct again at the college. This was with proper college students for cast and crew, and fellow faculty in design and technical roles. I directed Clay McLeod Chapman's Volume of Smoke in early October. The epistolary monologue play about a tragic theatre fire in 1811 did not seem, on paper, my usual thing. However, it had an old-school theatricality about it that I enjoyed playing around in (red velvety curtains, wooden platforms, Regency-era costumes, candles, canvas drops, ropes and pulleys and sandbags and so on...). It was a hard rehearsal process with many moving parts, especially coming off the extremely stripped down one-person fringe show. It did revive my affinity for directing. I love that one shows up day after day equipped only with ones ability to observe and focus, the think and make decisions. I feel I am slowly becoming a more elegant director, project by project.

A few weeks after Volume of Smoke at the college, I completed a big project that had been years in the making. For more than half a decade, I have been compiling notes about solo performance to lay down my extremely hard-won knowledge into a book. I wanted to put down a sort of guide or introduction for someone just starting his or her journey into solo performance. I wanted to write the sort of book I wish I had when I started out creating and performing one-person shows over a decade and half ago.

The result was Crafting the Solo Show: A Practical Guide to Creating, Performing and Touring a One-Person Theatre Production. I am immensely proud and relieved to finally have this out in the world. Form followed function as well. As the book is about creating one-person shows, I am pleased that I wrote, edited and formatted the book myself. It was a huge undertaking and really tested my attention to detail. I am sure as time passes I will discover errors here and there, but for now there is a both an ebook as well as a paperback version.

By November I started to dial my creative activities back in order to ease into the holidays with friends and family. I also wound up the semester of teaching by the beginning of December.

Fun Grip Inprov at the Dallas Comedy Club

Throughout the year, Swearingen and I performed a monthly gig at the Dallas Comedy Club. Our long-form improv duo Fun Grip took the stage, usually on a split-bill with another improv group. We were shuffled to different time slots every few months which made maintaining and growing an audience difficult. The improv was fun, though, and was a good chance to play a bit.

I also continued to create both YouTube videos and Cultivated Playwright podcast episodes throughout the year from time to time.

I feel like I was really getting my legs under me and sort of priming myself for bigger and better things ahead. It was fun to have some old-school camaraderie and travel. I am pleased that I continued to add to my growing list of self-published works and that I made some solid pieces of theatre this past year, as a playwright, director, producer and so forth.

I am excited by what 2024 will bring.

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