This is the year-end retrospective that appeared on the site in December.

RETROSPECT: With the end of the year in sight, I naturally start to look back on all the things that have gone on. Sometimes I wish I'd kept my old updates here, in case I'm forgetting anything. But in a year as rich and wonderful as 2004 has been, I have my doubts I'd forget anything. This has been in many ways the best year I've had since I returned to acting in 2002. Let me touch on a few of the highlights.

The year started with Blithe Spirit with the Walpole Footlighters. Not only was this one of the best plays I've ever done, I worked with a wonderful cast on a great set with wild and fun special effects. I mean, this set had an easy chair that bounced around thanks to a telescoping pole that poked up through the floor and was controlled by a line that ran under the stage, up backstage through a pulley to a bar than an operator would yank to make the chair dance. And it was a last-minute addition! Blithe also brought me my wonderful fiancee Stacey, whose presence in my life has been one of the factors, if not the greatest of them, that has made this year so amazing.

After Blithe, Walpole was also kind enough to host a staged reading of the first version of Dinner for Several. This was the reading where it was realized that the play ran noticeably too long. But the response from the (very patient) audience was great. I recall someone telling me it was "as good as anything on Broadway." As an aside, I think that Walpole, as one of the larger and respected companies in the area, should continue to host readings and encourage scripts from new or local writers.

From there it was on to my first production and my first run as director, helming Two Dates. Just a note to first-time directors: taking on a project with 14 actors, especially when you're not in a good place mentally, isn't the way to go. Despite my own travails at that time, the cast of both shows made me extraordinarily proud. Two great plays made even more enjoyable through the interpretations of the actors. This project also brought me several wonderful friends, people who have become genuinely close to me across the months gone by.

We weren't quite done with Bob's Date, however. Stacey subsequently took the script and a new set of actors and carved out a magnificent new version that won accolades by the score at the EMACT and AACT competitions. In both venues Stacey was noted for direction, and the lighting and costumes also won awards in both. We were noted (across the two competitions) for best ensemble, best actress and actor, best supporting actress and actor, and at EMACT the cast was given a special adjudicator's award for risk taking, noting their ability to turn abstract concepts into believable characters. At AACT the script was named "Outstanding Original Play"--despite being the only original piece there.

All this while, I was also playing the role of Chip Martin, the guy with the cell phone in his head, in Mike Legge's new Sideshow Cinema release, Democrazy, which shot from January through September. It was tremendous fun, very loose and free, and the end product (available hopefully very soon) is something I'm very proud to be part of.

Speaking of film, June brought the premiere of A House Divided from Jodom Pictures. I'd worked on this one in fall of 2003 and had eagerly awaited a first glimpse. I wasn't disappointed. And the premiere, held at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, was quite an event. This film should be available next month or so. (That's what I'm told.)

Also during the summer, I worked on Barbara Wilson Arboleda's wonderful and sadly aborted film Imperfectly. Politics unfortunately cut this one short; I hope that Barb will be able to find a home and subsequent production for the script because it's amazing and needs to be seen.

Back on stage, in July Attleboro Community Theater hosted a benefit showing of two of my short pieces, Owen and George Play Chess and my beloved Waiting for the End of the World. Waiting reunited me with Karen Gibson and Ed Benjamin III and that, I will say openly, has been another of the great gifts this year has held for me.

At the end of July, Waiting was seen again in a production at the first Fledgling Short Plays Festival in Providence, and the people there did a fine job with it, even if they did see fit to put Death in blue polyester slacks.

Waiting would be seen once more in 2004 at the AYTB Theater Company fundraiser in November. There I reprised my role as Death (a part I really love doing), joined by Barbara Wilson Arboleda and Jay Savage. I had, when I first found out about the inclusion of the play in AYTB's evening, hoped that Ed and Karen would be able to join me again--but I was pleased to have to look for new cast members because they, joyfully, had been cast in the Medway Players' premiere of Dinner for Several. But back to that in a moment.

Early fall found me in a felt tunic and a wig and sporting a large, sweaty, and constantly moving chunk of foam rubber as I cavorted, along with 22 of my dearest friends, as Richard the Zero in the incomparably insane Mr. Legge's newest play, Shake A Spear. What was most amazing about this play was that there were 23 actors and no clashes of ego. This was one of the most cohesive, happy, and hearty-drinking casts I've ever had the pleasure to be part of. I have wonderful memories of everyone backstage dancing between scenes to Mike's hysterically selected soundtrack, which included, as the Bard himself may have wanted, cuts from Hendrix, the Archies, Leslie Gore, and Howlin' Wolf, among others. And we boogied. (To say nothing of the spectacle that was the Spear cast assaulting a local karaoke night at a Chinese restaurant.)

In October, Stacey and I took off on our whirlwind tour of Gainesville, Florida, as we attended the reading of Dinner for Several upon its winning the James Sunwall New Play Festival, sponsored by Acrosstown Repertory Theater. If you frequent this site, you'll have heard this already, but for the benefit of those just coming in, the Sunwall judges named Dinner a "hands-down winner" and called it "a thinking person's Friends." The reading was great, and the hospitality shown us by the Acrosstown crew was first rate. Hopefully they'll see fit to add it to their season next year.

And then came the year's capper: the premiere of Dinner for Several, with a cast I could only have dreamed of. With Mike Legge at the helm, I watched this piece come to brilliant life. I have said before that it's to the cast's credit that although I know and have worked with all of them, I never saw them as Ed, Karen, Frank, etc. I saw only the characters I'd written. My favorite comment on the show came on closing night when after the first act someone said to me, "Thank God--I have to stop and catch my breath!"

And across the course of the year I also wrote and completed the short piece Grievance and made a lot of headway on the heir to Dinner's throne, One Before Forty.

I consider myself amazingly blessed. My work has been produced and well received, with two of them, Owen and George and Waiting, accepted for publication next year. I've had the chance to touch hundreds of audience members, to make them laugh and think and feel. I've made wonderful friends and sculpted lasting memories. Most of all, I've had an amazingly good time doing it all. And it's my intention to make 2005 outshine it with more productions, more productivity from the keyboard, more performances, and more friends.

To all of you who were instrumental in making this year so great--and there are honestly too many of you to mention by name here without wearing my fingers to the nub--I give you my genuine and heartfelt thanks. I may have said it to you before, but I will say it again: you are some of the gifts that make my life great. Thank you for being here, for embracing my work, for playing onstage with me, for sharing your talents and letting me work with you, and for just being my good and true friends.

Peace & power,

John