SHOWS I'VE BEEN IN

While I was in a few shows in my seventh and eighth grade years, I didn't really get involved with theatre until second semester Sophomore year in High School, when my friend BEN SCHNEIDER suggested I audition for a show. He's the one that "forced" me into theatre, and he's also the one that made me mention him on this page. His exact words in an e-mail were "Still no mention of who FORCED you into theater in the first place, but thats ok, no really I understand, mentioning Justin Koh is much more important than little ol' me". Not that he's bitter or anything :) Happy now, Ben? Anyway, after that, well, what can I say, I was bitten by the Show Biz Bug (or is that the Theatre Flea?)

So now, in chronological order of the school years in which they took place, are the shows.

1992 - Some little Halloween show - BLECCH!! I was a bit actor, and the male understudy. Yay me.

1993 - Mystery Liner. another Halloween show, I played Adam Masters, a passenger killed off by cyanide poisoning in the first ten minutes, touching off a search on board the cruise ship for the killer. It turned out to be the doctor...so much for the Hippocratic Oath.

1994 - Nada. Zip. Zilch.

1995 - Strike Up The Band. With music by George and Ira Gershwin and scripting by George S. Kaufman (who wrote for the Marx Brothers) it was a great show. I was a chorus member, but I got to sing cool songs like "Fletcher's American Cheese Choral Society". Don't laugh! The plot revolved around a cheese factory owner taking America to war with ever-neutral Switzerland for their tariffs on cheese.

1996 - Moby Dick. No, not the entire novel on stage...the Coarse Actors version, by Michael F. Green, where things are scripted to go horribly wrong. The table of the Try Pots Inn collapses repeatedly, actors forget lines, or flub them (as when Starbuck, Ahab's first mate asks him "Was it not the same Moby leg which took off thy Dick?" Incidentally, Starbuck was played by my best buddy, Marc Schifalacqua). Ahab also got a horrible cramp from hobbling around on his wooden peg leg, with his real leg jutting out behind him. Queequeg harpoons a stage crew member demonstrating his throwing prowess, and the entire cast can't remember the lyrics to the hymn "Eternal Father Strong to Save". As for me, I played Elijah, the mad sailor. I prophesized the Pequod's doom, forgot my name, got my hook caught on Queequeg's harpoon, and wound up calling myself "Jeremiah". I also supplied various voices for the show; those of the captain of the good ship Rachel, and the un-syncronized voice of a sailor falling to his doom (un-syncronized in that there is a splash, I scream, and then the dummy falls onto the deck of the ship). Finally Moby Dick appears, splits in half as Ahab stabs the large (cardboard) whale, and vanishes off stage. During the final scene of the play, the tail wanders back on briefly, stepping on several "dead" sailors.

Also in 1996, I was in the musical version of Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I'm not going to even attempt to give a synopsis of this, as it's so complex, but I'll just tell the Vonnegut fans out there that I played Kilgore Trout. Here is our cast photo. I've got an arrow pointing to my head.

1997 - Senior Follies - La Mission Impossible. During Junior year, we get the opportunity to write a play lampooning (mercilessly, I might add) the faculty of our school. I got to play our principal, Mr. Gordon Sharafinski.

That year, I was also in Bamboozled!, a modern retelling of an Italian commedia dell'arte. I was Don Pantalone (translating to "Mr. Pants"), a lecherous old man who wants to wed a girl, oh, probably one-fifth of his age. I got to beat up four members of the cast with slapsticks (Nick Bridich as Harlequino, Milan Gupta as Don Pocolino Pizzicacci, Ian Campbell as Brighella, and Nick Schnettler as Trufaldino), so I had fun.

Finally, my last high school performance was George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones. Another complex tale...I played triplets, quite a stretch. I was the starter at the Hotel Cecil in London (though I didn't have a name as that character, I called him Nigel), the racetrack announcer at the British Darby (no name for him, either. I called him Rodney), and Captain Squirvy of the S. S. Hurrah. I had solos in four different songs, one a spoken solo, and I had a song about me! That was a blast, and I have many fond memories of that show.

1998 - I just appeared in two scenes produced by the Junior and Senior directing classes this first semester. I was Mortimer in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Martin Heller in Angels in America. These weren't the whole plays, just scenes from them.

In the second semester, I would have played Salieri in a production of Amadeus to be performed in the studio, but alas, it was not to be. Oh, I was slated to be cast and everthing, but then I was snapped up to appear in two shows on the Mainstage! They were two one-act plays by Moliere. In The Precious Damsels I played Du Croisy, a spurned suitor of one of the two precious damsels. In The Doctor In Spite of Himself I played Sganarelle, the Doctor. That's right. The lead. I nearly wet myself. But it was a great deal of fun, and singing, and dancing, and getting beat up by my lovely wife Martine, or "Wifey" as I called her. :)

1999 - I'm once again on the Mainstage, in two separate shows. In Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon I play Dr. Fawcett. Not a large part, but there are no small parts, just small actors. Plus, it's directed by our Theatre Department chairman, Jonathan Wilson. It goes up in October. And then in November, I'll be in Dark of the Moon playing the Conjur Man. Sort of an Appalachian witch/warlock type guy. Ok, a year after the show, I’m finally starting to write about it.  Both shows were immense fun, and I also wound up understudying the character of Andrew Rally in I Hate Hamlet  by Paul Rudnick. 

2000 - My first show this year was a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.  I played Rev. Samuel Parris, my first somewhat villainous role.  The following semester I played Friar Wilson in Romeo and Juliet. Are you sensing a theme here?.

2001 - I was actually called in to fill a role in an original musical adaptation of The Scarlet Letter book by Sandra Grand-Showalter, music and lyrics by William Underwood. It was a great deal of fun, and had some beautiful, haunting music. I then got involved with the studio production (my first studio role! Yay!) of The Elephant Man playing both Ross, the manager of John Merrick, the Elephant Man, and Bishop How, a clergyman (again!) who visits Merrick. Then Jonathan Wilson asked me to step in to play a Submarine (one who traveled in the hull of a ship, not the underwater vessel, thank you very much) from Italy in A View From the Bridge.

2002 - I started the year playing Andrey in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, which went over very well. Currently, I'm playing Federzoni, a ballad singer, and an 8 year old boy in a studio production of Brecht's Galileo. That's it for now, but Cabaret is coming up next semester! Here's hoping!

That's all for now, come back later!