When I was a wee little boy in my local elementary school, my 5^th grade teacher, Mrs. Desrosiers (pronounced: Day-ROSE-e-a), selected me for the 5^th grade Earth-Day play, back when the NYC budget allowed for such useless nonsense like a play about taking care of the planet to take the school children’s time. It was a big part, if I could say so myself, standing there in the auditorium again and again for the little young-ins. They liked it. The administration liked me in it enough to audition me-yes they had auditions for little 5^th grade children in the little magnet school in little Astoria, Queens-and I suppose my little extraverted self won their heart. They cast me in the last school musical. Another of many budget cuts would kill the music and drama and musical of the school in the years to come. So the teachers continued what they planned as a full on simulation of a Big Broadway show but in the realm of little elementary children, the seeds of society. They put the show together from many different big plays, taking their music, inventing their own plot: a director needs a final act and auditions a bunch of numbers which all turn out to be lip-sung. I played the director. Baddabing, baddaboom, it was my thing. I loved it. Public School 70 made me. Right out of their imagination sprang my passion and dedication, my life’s calling. |                                                            |                                                            |

Slam. Middle school was going to be at a zone school. My parents got word of a performing arts school in the city. I had one week to prepare a monologue and a song. I was no singer. I found a monologue about the joys of losing your braces, I sang one of the songs used at the PS 70 production “Another Opening” that was also the name of the play, maybe it was the name of my destiny, maybe it foreshadowed my fly being open at my Oscar ceremony, or my open casket, in any case I was admitted. That changed my life.  |                                                            |                                                            |

At the Professional Performing Arts School, I spent half the day in academia land with my solitary class of 13 and the other half in rotating classes of music, vocal, dance, and acting. I was exposed, really exposed to the real thing, and the school was filled with kids of stage mommies and daddies who got their rugrats working on Broadway and Disney while they were 6, so I was surrounded by professional actors. I was sitting out in that aspect, but not for long.

I needed a change of scenery by Highschool so I auditioned and was accepted to Laguardia Performing Arts for Drama. I took it upon myself to read up on the business and find representation to send me out on auditions for professional work. At 14, I signed with a manager. Shortly afteward, I signed with a handful of talent agents. Then I was booking.  |                                                            |                                                            |

Immigration was often in the way, it what always in the back of my mind. My parents were independent settlers, or economic refugees, a category that is hardly recognized by the United States these days, even when its foreign policy is the gun-ho agent responsible for foreign unrest. So my parents didn’t get their legal act together for various reasons and as a result poor me walked around with the black, prejudicial cloud of apathetic political shakage,  “illegal alien” well, send me back to Mars, so long as they have a theater and independent movies I’ll be happy. Just as black people, and women, and Jews, and all sorts of arbitrary peoples weren’t allowed to work and travel and drive and vote, neither am I, but to hell with the system, there is little remorse for overriding a bureaucracy that antagonizes its subscribers. Thank goodness for CUNY Honors or I may have had to get private agreements to obtain higher education. And I found my ways of starting to realize my goal, I became a working actor: commercials, national and local, print work, book covers, magazines, those little bits of superficial fiscal kisses, they were a fun way of making money and they brought me closer to the onion layer of professional work that I wanted to invest in: theater both in school and out in downtown Manhattan, independent and festival films, my own student film, and finally union membership, I became a member of the Screen Actors Guild this summer.  |                                                            |                                                            |

Karate had been a part of my life, ever since I was 8 years old. From early on I learned to see the body as a flexible instrument. Martial arts warmed my disposition for dance and for yoga. Theater has brought yoga for focus and personal development. There is definitely a tie that ought to be exploited.  |                                                            |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         |

Now we are stepped into the realm of scholastic development. I had always been curious about acting, what makes people act. As an actor, we analyzed scripts, actions, people’s behavior, motivations, fears, desires, and their tactics to get what they want. I realized that my analysis was applicable for humans off the stage, that they are no different. At that moment, I stepped into the realm of psychology, at least that’s what the world called the psychic analysis of people off the stage. And when I learned to talk about “consciousness” or the life of the character or human as he experienced it, psychology pointed me to the philosophy department. Now, even though I landed in compartment number three, I knew that I was on one single train, and it was traveling at high speeds. I was on to something. This year I’m tackling the anthropology of theater and neuropsychology to learn the objectivity of theater, or the world’s stage, and the world of the players on it, both as characters and as humans.  |                                                            |                                                                                                                                                                                   |

With the honors thesis, I want to find the relationship between the character on stage of the theater and the theater of life, and find how we can bridge performance of the represented reality with performance that represents the alternate reality, what some call the truth and others call the “every-day.” The Macaulay Theater Group will be a key player in uncovering answers. I’m thrilled to be part of this band of Honors Thesis researchers.