Bio

                    I was raised in Burlington, one of the first suburbs of Boston in a home where square dance petticoats burst from closets stuffed with jackets from the forties. My father’s accent joined the potpourri of other foreign waiters at the Statler Hilton Hotel and after sixty hour work weeks, he would build terraced gardens which matched the shape of that hotel chandelier.

                    Many of my father’s Yugoslav family came from Italian refugee camps. My mother was raised in a convent orphanage in Madeira with family from Portugal and Brazil. At the table, as Baba poured his homemade wine and Tata grated the parmesan cheese, their stories stood like trophies scuffed and worn. My family told of minesweepers in Italian harbors, giants unearthed near Rio, and my grandmother’s calloused hands that could heal eyes. Some were fictions that told a truth, like my fierce aunt’s insistence that she was a governess and not a maid in Budapest. Other stories were truths that sheltered a lie. I write about that thin line between the two.

                    This brave new suburban world also sheltered this contradiction in the patchwork quilt of brand spanking new suburban homes, where orderly streets and well-kept lawns sheltered troubled families. Mrs. C rocked with the sorrow of the crib death of her firstborn. Mrs. M had a child outside of her wedlock. Mrs. P was a playboy model and Mrs. G had bottles stuffed in laundry baskets. These women had also immigrated to a strange land. There was what seemed, what was hoped for, what was. The pond where we gathered tadpoles bobbed with oil drums which were later proved to be toxic. I write about what lies, often lethal, beneath what we see.

                    Bullied as a gay boy in a working class town, poetry and theater became my refuge. At fourteen I published my first poem. At fifteen, I played the serpent in an ensemble piece based on the Torah which toured, and was also cast in West Side Story. The world opened up, there were cities, graveyards, rivers to canoe, the first boy I kissed. I had to sneak to Boston for dance classes since it did not meet with my father’s approval. Vietnam lured on the horizon, my sister’s friends coming home in body bags. I argued with teachers, excelled in my school work trying to uncover the other side of history, as my plays continue to do.

                    I refused a university scholarship. I wanted to see the world before I was programmed as to how to see it. I headed to England and hitch hiked for two months, stood on ruins, unearthed stories from history. The wanderlust bit me and I was back and forth to Europe. I went with my father to his Croatian island, his first return in thirty-six years. I slept in the bed my father was born and held him as he cried, standing in front of the ghost town where he was born. Since then I have traveled a lot, including six months in Ireland restoring Georgian houses, and three years in Southeast Asia teaching ESL in Macau and in Bangkok.

                    I attended university at twenty four, as a dance major, but got my degree in Comparative Mythology to explore the story, the mask, the uncovering. After writing plays, short stories and poetry for twenty five years I received an MFA in Playwriting/Screenwriting from Lesley University and was accepted as a guest artist for the Kennedy Center’s ten-day intensive in Playwriting, as well as a participant in Cape May’s Playwright’s Symposium. I am a current member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

                    I have had 39 monologues and 16 plays stand upon the stage. I am waiting for the next headline, or overheard comment to unpack itself into a play which may tell a lie which illustrates the truth of the unheard.