a man | an actor

I am an actor and an artist. I always have been, though I did not define myself that way until I was 45. Now, in my 75th year, I am creating a requiem of my process into discovery and creativity. Like Sisyphus, I am an absurd man.

“There is an absurd confrontation in the universe; this world is teemed with unreasonable chaos and logical man. One day, while living his daily routine, a man pauses and, as if to look at his reflected image in a mirror, sees himself living a series of actions in the world. Actions that have been and are becoming his fate. Suddenly he is aware that he will be lost in the chaos one day, without company, leaving the world and everyone else to exist in his absence.” (From the introduction of my published thesis - This Sound of Being Alone: A Search and Portrait of Albert Camus’ “Absurd” Man)

From high school into college, I began to recognize that I was different from my friends and colleagues. I thought of myself as extremely introverted and found solace in being alone. That truth has stayed with me throughout my life, and more recently I have come to understand myself as autistic—someone who masked in order to survive.

In 1977, at age 26, I chose to perform a one-man character piece after discovering The Myth of Sisyphus, which included Camus’ essays on Sisyphus and the actor. I was already familiar with Camus, having read The Stranger during my junior year of high school and later seen the film with Marcello Mastroianni. At 16, I became absorbed by the thoughts and feelings surrounding a person’s absurd place in life on earth.

I performed that one-man theater piece at the University of California, Davis, in the Department of Dramatic Art. In that moment, with innocence and naivety, my life as an artist began. Now, at 74, as I create an archival library of 35 years of theater work, I look back on the past five decades with a deeper understanding of myself, my creative process, and my evolution as a theater artist.

Neil Diamond’s “I Am . . . I Said” consumed me as I wrote my master’s thesis and inspired its title: THIS SOUND OF BEING ALONE: A Search and Portrait of Albert Camus’ “Absurd” Man. In the 1970s, I lived a deeply introspective existentialism:

At UC Davis, I developed the thesis research and monologues on my own, but staging the performance became a collaboration through sets, lights, costumes, and props—and through creative partnerships I still carry with me. In the Dramatic Art Department, my life stretched before me; now, as I remount this work in my 75th year, I look toward its end. The scripts remain, now joined by my narration as the actor. The title has also changed: an absurd man: His Sound of Being Alone.

This project brings me to my core: although I have family and a few friends, I am alone. That remains my truth. Once an “extreme introvert,” I now understand myself as autistic—and as an absurd man.

With my wife and creative friends—my chosen family—I will perform alone on stage, supported by other artists in production design. Though I do not live alone, I alone live this absurd life, facing its end while recognizing the accomplishments that make it mine. In earning my theater degree, I became an artist in my own way—as a man, an artist, and an actor.

This website chronicles the evolving creation of my 2027 solo character piece.

“But I got an emptiness deep inside

And I′ve tried but it won't let me go

And I'm not a man who likes to swear

But I′ve never cared for the sound of being alone”