My cast for "Telling Baltimore" religiously drove DURING RUSH HOURS from DC, Virginia and the outer regions of Maryland to Hopkins east Baltimore campus to rehearse at Hopkins east Baltimore campus. They wanted to get their veteran's story out there, and they wanted it to be right. I could never be exhausted because they were putting so much into the whole experience. 

We also did several other performances in DC and Maryland. We became a Veterans's touring company for several years.

Another "B-Side Man" performance, 2000. During Covid, Zoom became a life-saver. Especially for solo shows. In case you missed the synopsis:

Through an extended monologue, an African-American man reflects on growing up black but not angry, his life as a playwright, a short-lived exotic dancing experience, and his free-thinking liberal arts background. Ultimately it’s his transformation from “singular satellite” to married man that forces him to face the challenge of continuing to write, or abandoning his creative journey. Personal tragedy is just one of the elements that declares individuality may not be the end-all-be-all it’s cracked up to be.

“B-Side Man” is a coming-of-age journey that explores what it means to grow up with views that run against the prevailing cultural, racial and artistic tides.

Directed by Chuck Smith, and it seems so VERY long ago. But love that "Vivisections" showed out in Chi-Town. Don't believe there's ever been a play about a rap star having a nervous breakdown. People thought it was a play with rap. It was a play about a rapper with, as I like to think, "classic undertones" to something darker. 

Applause! Applause! I caught the end of it. Lucky me.

I was able to attend this production, and I can't tell you how exciting it was. Frequently, the "He-Man" casts have been either very good at basketball, but maybe a little inexperienced acting-wise, or vice-versa. The Houston cast was great at both. 

A few years back (maybe decades?). Baltimore Magazine gave me some nice "space". The response from the Center Stage (final sentences) in this interview gave me the absolute motivation to move forward. 

The reviewer just stopped in for excerpts from a variety of Fringe Festival performances. He seemed to like mine.

A Preview of the Baltimore Fringe Fest by Andrew Sargus Klein

"After back to back preview nights for the Charm City Fringe Festival, I found myself wishing for more such performances (in general, not just for the Fringe Festival).

There’s a certain looseness and camaraderie that comes when a half-dozen casts are crammed into one ill-fitting venue and asked to perform a small slice of a larger work. Lines are bobbled, sets are broken, and audience participation is pretty much always on the table. It’s a low stakes accessibility, and it works. The price of good, informal cheer was a lack of nuance and subtlety.

Since the productions picked their most crowd-friendly scenes to present at Joe Squared and Mercury Theatre, it’s difficult to plot the emotional spectrum of this year’s lineup. As such, it’s also difficult to pinpoint which productions are can’t-misses and which ones are a hard pass

It was clear enough that humor and accessibility are two of the more dominant themes at this year’s Fringe. I didn’t mind that I saw Alonso Lamont Jr. perform the same piece of his one-man show on both preview nights; B-Side Man, which centers on Lamont’s “journeys, transformations, segues, stories, love, loss, [and] dark days,” was a hit with both crowds.

Lamont described life as an African-American man in 1970s Iowa City—specifically, dancing to Aerosmith wearing nothing but a red thong and cowboy boots. There’s an immediacy to his storytelling and a genuine warmth of character that comes with it."

Zulu Fits Synopsis:

2 teenage girls (sisters), NeeCee & Giselle, run a website called
“The Blow-Up Sistas”. They decide to kidnap a former black power
advocate, Jersey Jack Black, from prison. The sisters and their mom and
dad have recently moved into a home with a “slavery background,” yet
there is little interest on the part of anyone in the household to pursue
this particular history, even though the girls are haunted by elements of
past evils contained in the legacy of their house. The new family home
was the center of a profitable slave-kidnapping business belonging to
Patty Cannon (true), and the mystery of the Fits ultimately intrudes into
the more ‘contemporary’ business NeeCee & Giselle set as their
revolutionary goal.

However as they grow closer to actually “springing” Jack from
prison, the girls and their male cohort fall victim to a series of
uncontrollable Fits (seizures). Jersey Jack, too, has intimate knowledge
of the Fits and he’s known of their existence for quite some time. When
the Blow-Up Sistas finally reach Jersey Jack, his past, their present and
the mystery of Zulu Fits all converge. Past secrets are revealed and
present motivations are unmasked. Ultimately a new fiction is created
surrounding the revolutionary spirit NeeCee and Giselle singlehandedly
try to re-create.