The Luna Park Gazette

I did my best to keep it together, but I finally had to reach for the tissues. I’m a world famous weeper and I make no attempt to hold back the waterworks when I’m in the privacy of my home, where I can wail to the rafters and nobody’s the wiser. However, on this particular occasion I was at the Signature Theatre on 42nd Street in Manhattan taking in a performance of Athol Fugard’s Master Harold…and the Boys. But I couldn’t keep from crying, despite the crowd, as this is simply one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful plays I’ve ever seen. The language is fabulous and the emotions so raw that I never had a chance. I don’t know what the man sitting next to me was thinking when I start sobbing and after a few seconds I didn’t care. This was the third time I’ve seen Master Harold since 1982 when my oldest brother and I saw it with James Earl Jones and a young Danny Glover. I saw it again in 2006 with my sister and our late father and this time Danny Glover was playing the o...

I think I’m getting better at this. I had two book signings this week for my novel Born Speaking Lies and I’m starting to get this whole author thing down. On Wednesday I had a book launch party at the Mysterious Book Shop on Warren Street in Manhattan, where I’ve attended many readings. Now it was my turn. For years I’ve dreamed of standing in front of a group of people and reading from my work, but when I first arrived I saw nothing but empty seats. The list of attendees wasn’t that long to begin with and I had four cancellations before I even walked through the door. “It might be just the three of us,” I told my dear auntie and sister when they arrived. I was trying to chalk it up to experience; this was my first book, people have busy lives, and the old standby, shit happens. But none of that took away from the numbing sadness that had gathered around my heart. This was going to suck. When a UPS driver showed up to make a delivery I half-jokingly suggested we make ...

Thank God for the theater. My sister, auntie, and I saw Finian’s Rainbow at the Irish Repertory Theater today and we enjoyed a wonderful show filled with beautiful songs, fine acting and no Donald Trump. It was the closet thing to a remedy from Tuesday’s nightmare scenario that has one of the country’s largest KKK groups planning a parade next month to celebrate Trump’s election. Racist attacks have skyrocketed around America since Trump's victory so we shouldn’t be surprised that the boys in the white sheets have decided to come out of the closet. Trump claimed that he wasn’t aware of the incidents (was he in a fucking missile silo?), said there was only a small amount and told people to “stop it.” It seems fitting that there’s a character in Finian’s Rainbow who is an avowed racist--until he’s magically turned into an African-American. He learns pretty quickly what oppression is really like and amends his bigoted ways. Where’s a leprechaun when you need one? Trum...

My Halloween costume this year was painfully appropriate. I had made a last minute decision to buy an old time prisoner outfit, complete with striped shirt, pants, and cap. I didn’t think much of it, at first; it was just a standard issue costume intended to get me through the holiday. But it got a lot of positive responses, especially from total strangers. “I know you,” one young man said to me as my sister and I rode the F train. “We did time together in Alcatraz.” We were going to our friends’ apartment in lower Manhattan and we had a wonderful time, starting with the doorman who threatened to call the cops the moment he saw me. Our outfits were a big hit (my sister was a nun), we met some great people, and ate too damn much. When we left our friends’ apartment, I started running for a bus, prompting a man walking his dog to point at me and say to my sister, “he’s getting away!” Everything was fine, at first, but then the evening suddenly morphed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. ...