About the Project
OUTTA THE DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT is a One-Person Play where the beginning and the end of the show is written and the Middle of it is improvised. Anthony attempts to take his life by jumping in front of a train. Instead of being dead as he had hoped, he is transported to this otherworldly place where he must answer to the Voice of G.D (the Grand Decider) for what he has just done. The audience will vote at the end of the show if Anthony will return to Earth to complete his mission or become a decider like the others. One by one the audience/deciders, will pick a wooden tablet from a Bingo Wheel, hand it to Anthony and he must explain why he did, as he did. During the course of the show, I get through about 8 to 12 stories depending on which ones are pulled which keeps the play at about 1 1/2 hours. There are a possible 85 stories. When I have done the play in Los Angeles, I have always had audience members come more than once, because no 2 shows are ever the same. Also, what I have always done and the end of the show is a Q&A where I talk about my own suicide attempt and open up a conversation on suicide awareness. I have always believed that we have come into this life to learn certain lessons and once we’ve learned them, we would pass on to something better. We weren’t born into this world perfect, moral creatures. I know that I wasn’t. We would be influenced and shaped by many factors including the families we were born into, where we were born, the schools we attended and the teachers we had, for me the Navy and more. We would make mistakes. I have… many. Hopefully, we would learn from our mistakes. We would be tested in life to see just how much we have learned. As we progressed in life, our tests would become more difficult. Early on in my life, when I was faced with one of these tests, I always took a bad situation and made it worse. I felt I was the victim. Everything bad happened to me. It has taken me a long time to begin to see these difficulties that life placed in my path, as some of the lessons I came into this world to learn. Once I came to this realization, I felt that I had begun to understand this world a little bit more and I began enjoying my journey. I felt I understood the rules of the game of life. I wanted to share what I learned with everyone that I came in contact with. I wanted to show, through sharing my life, that real change was possible. That it’s not, “This is who I am. I’ve always been like this.” No… That is not the goal, to be as I’ve always been. That we are here to change, and we can change. We do not have to be victims of our past. By sharing my life on stage, I hope to show that we can truly come, Outta The Darkness, Into The Light.
All the stories in the play, are true. I lived them. I am showing the worst of who I was, and the best of who I am. That I am still a work in progress. I remember in my earliest memory that I wanted to be an Actor. At that time, I wanted to be an Actor, because I didn’t want to be me. Early on I used humor as a way of coping with my pain. I was the Class Clown, the Funny Guy, so it came as a complete shock, when those who know me heard that on July 4th, 1983, I tried to take my life by jumping in front of a train. I remember at the time that it was my Fathers voice in my head that put me onto the tracks and it was the image of my Mother, that made me decide to jump out of the way. I was able to squeeze between the train and a fence. The train clipped and fractured my arm. I was lucky. I remember reading in the Daily News, the following week that someone was not so lucky. A man had gone onto the tracks to try and help a homeless man off the tracks. He was not able to squeeze between and was killed. It haunted me for many years that there was a man trying to help someone and he died. I was ready to throw it all away and I lived. At the time I lived in Brooklyn, and I could no longer even look at the subway trains. That is what brought me to Los Angeles.
When I hear of a suicide, my heart beats just a little bit faster. I have known 5 people that have taken their own lives. When I first heard of what Robyn Williams had done, it scared me because I thought once you had kids, that option was off the table. I guess it scared me because I was now a father and I guess I saw my Son as insurance that I could never fall that deep into depression again. It has been 35 years since I did my tap-dance on the tracks. I have written a play, Subway Suicide, a film The Last Train, and now my One-Man Show, Outta The Darkness, Into The Light, as an effort to bring attention to Suicide, to Depression and with these expressions I hope, to help others Into The Light.
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Production Team
