“I was in the middle of a concert…everything was going perfectly…and I was bored out of my mind. That was the moment that I made a fateful decision (to) devote my life to human expression versus human perfection.” – Yo Yo Ma A month ago, I was in a theater watching the amazing director Amy Marie Haven work with a huge cast to stage my play ‘La Sirène‘. The next day, she was packing … Read More

Many years ago, I was commissioned to write a play about secondhand smoke. Being completely ignorant of the subject and starting to think that it was an impossible topic for a play, I decided to interview a pulmonologist friend. He was so excited, knowledgeable and entertaining that I used his words and images to finish a first draft of “Lungman and Windpipe’s Excellent Adventure” within a week. This experience of creating a play by … Read More

Eleven years ago, when I got home from Japan after my final tour with Cirque du Soleil, a communications consulting firm invited me to join their small team. Stand & Deliver and I have grown a lot since then and last week I finished saying good-bye to my fifty plus colleagues and dozens of clients as I headed into the next phase of my career. My job as a dad, helping my sons launch … Read More

I had to drive out to Dublin way too early on a recent Sunday morning, taking my older son to his EMT training. Deadheading home, I heard this William Blake quote on the radio: “Joy and woe are woven fine” I turned off the sound so I could feel some joy, the joy of living with my boys-who-are-men, and then grief for the world we are all trying to live in. If joy and … Read More

“Gossip is living history. History is petrified gossip“. – A.O. Scott I love this. Imagine finding a hunk of petrified gossip in your backyard. Here are some more quotes from A.O. Scott’s essay on the author William Maxwell: “Maxwell (is) an unacknowledged forerunner of autofiction, that much-argued-over postmodern style of almost-autobiographical, self-ventriloquizing prose.” I may not love this quote as much. Almost-autobiographical self-ventriloquizing? Does Scott think a ventriloquist is hiding behind a dummy, a … Read More

When performing was my mainstay, the greatest accolade I could get was “Jeff works all the time.” In a fickle free-lance business, this meant that I had achieved a form of stability, that I had ‘medaled’ in clowning. I wore that medal proudly. “Works all the time” also meant that we all worked hurt – torn ligaments, sprained joints, broken vertebrae, as well as anxiety, loneliness and, for some, depression. Once, a Cirque du … Read More

An interview I recently did with Pirie Jones Grossman about my “second chapter” is now on the Authority Magazine website. As a teaser, here are three of the “five things I wish someone had told me before I became a communications consultant.” “The thing you are trying to hide, that you’re a circus clown, is exactly the thing that makes you good at this job.” “You will need to teach executives many of the … Read More

Thirty-four years ago today, Comedy of Errors opened at Lincoln Center Theater. The producers were kind enough to schedule this big event on my 30th birthday. After the show, I got into an all-plaid outfit purchased just for the occasion and made my way down to Sardi’s with my date Amy Aquino. We walked in, Amy saw that the place was SRO and, in a voice that soared easily above the chatter and my … Read More