Ryan J. Haddad

Luminaries in the lobby!!!

Without Lisa Kron and her play WELL, there would be no GOOD TIME CHARLIE. To have worked with her, learned from her, and been loved by her for months on TARTUFFE last year was the gift of a lifetime.

Tony Kushner and Mark Harris were at the same performance of GOOD TIME CHARLIE, seated in the second row. I was watching them throughout, though I evaded eye contact on my Tony Kushner laugh line. They leapt to their feet at curtain call and effusively praised the writing afterward. Tony said, “I had no idea it would go where it went, and by the end, I couldn’t breathe.”

Without Tim Miller, my mentor in solo performance, I would not be making autobiographical work, and I would not have a career. Period.

Tim and Mark Russell go all the way back to PS 122. Mark gave me my start as a writer/performer at The Public Theater, in Under the Rader Incoming! 2017.

And Tim introduced me (on Facebook??) to the indomitable Joan Lipkin, who has been championing my work for 12 years.

Thanks to all of these gorgeous souls for showering love on GOOD TIME CHARLIE, and for helping me find my way as an artist.

(Back to Tony for a sec . . . the same “musical theatre camp” from which I “came back gay” is the first place I heard a scene from Angels in America performed - by teenagers in Ohio. *I* did a scene from Frankie and Johnny. Yes, those are both plays, not musicals. I came out days later.)