My gig at the Arc Gallery last Sunday almost got “COVID cancelled” – one of my sons tested positive, we were all quarantined and I needed a negative test on Friday to avoid canceling the Sunday event. It worked out, everyone is healthy and I learned a lot about how art can connect people in this time of disconnection. I wanted my event to relate to the exhibit, “Dollhouse,” and to use techniques from … Read More

“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