

"How could they just send you home from the neurologic ICU, messed up as you were?"
That question was from an audience member following a performance of My Stroke of Luck at The Marsh, San Francisco. (I'm dedicating this and the next bunch of newsletters to audience questions.) "Shouldn't they have sent you to rehab?" I could only smile. I know how outrageous it seems: discharge a woman who cannot communicate, who struggles to walk with a cane, "to home", with no assistance, and no plan, when that home houses 12 and 14-year-old sons, who await the retu


"So what do you think it is with doctors not seeking help?"
That was the first audience question at my talk back Saturday night. What indeed! Everyone has heard, "Doctors make lousy patients," and "A physician who treats him or herself has a fool for a patient." But despite those aphorisms, and though we joke about it amongst ourselves, many of us persist in self diagnosing, self treating and directing our own care. Of course we are knowledgeable, skilled and confident, and spend our working hours diagnosing and treating disease in o


"How can you do the same show over and over again?"
I'm asked that a lot. But that question assumes that the actor simply delivers the same performance every show. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. True, the script doesn't change - if you don't count the very human occasional dropped or swapped words or lines, the props don't change, lighting and sound -again if you don't count human error- and the basic blocking (moves and positions) don't change. But every show is unique, every performance has its surpris


Bathing in laughter, feeling cozy, warm and fuzzy...
No, not curled up in bed, though that is one of my favorite pass times! In the theater! Thursday morning was cold and rainy, not an auspicious day, though unlike the east coast, no cosmic bomb cyclone of a storm predicted. Just a wet, grey, Northern California kind of day. But a special day for me; after a 3 plus week holiday hiatus, opening extended run of My Stroke of Luck at the Marsh San Francisco!!!! Now, to digress a moment here about that holiday hiatus. Well needed,