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Dad could lob a fifty pound bundle of newspapers from
a moving truck with one hand right into the doorway like
Magic Johnson doing a forty foot bounce pass. He drove
a truck for the New York Daily News. So did my grandfather,
my uncle and my cousins. On my block in Queens we had
four cops, two firemen, a milk truck driver, a plumber,
a handful of civil servants. Working stiffs. Strong unions,
guaranteed jobs for life. Of course to me back then being
a routeman for the News was the coolest job in the neighborhood
short of playing ball for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was
thirteen years old, just Bar Mitzvahed and ready to do
a man's work. |
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Opening speech "Blue Collar Bay" |
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Portraying himself in a stunning
one-person performance is Stephen Axelrod, a New York-based
actor and playwright with a long list of acting credentials.
A self-styled "tough-jew" whose treadmill quest
for identity is relentlessly thwarted by a father intent on
making him an extension of his own Queens blue-collar existence,
Axelrod evokes a form of tragedy that emulates the rough poetry
and on-target human insights of Clifford Odets, Phillip Roth,
and Lenny Bruce. |
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Please click on the picture to see Steve and
some hi-lites of Blue Collar Bay.
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Directed by Mark W. Travis ("A Bronx Tale"),
whose directorial career includes so many one-person show
successes that the Los Angeles Times credited him with having
"carved a mini-genre staging one-man real-life theatrical
pieces." Blue Collar Bay is a one-person show with true
grit and bite, and fits nicely into that genre. It is a New
York story, with specific time, place and culture, but is
timeless in its theme. Audiences young and old have responded,
and continue to respond to its cultural chords and themes. |
The show also includes the familiar touch of collaborator
and playwright Liz Karlin, whose works include the highly-acclaimed
"Moon Dance." Ms. Karlin's assistance, says Axelrod,
was "invaluable". |
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