My Last Crazytown Post....For Now By Sam Perwin While I think it's safe to say that no one will be sad to see 2016 go, this year brings to the end my time at Crazytown. It's been a wonderful three and a half years and I'm so grateful for what Crazytown has done, not only for my blogging experience but for my writing. The exercise of coming up with a post every week for three years has tested the limits of my creativity - I'm reminded, as I often am, of the Sex & the City episode in which Carrie... Continue reading

I Have Talented Friends By Sam Perwin This time of year can be exhausting, but I always try to make time to support the supremely talented people I'm lucky enough to call my friends. Herewith, a roundup of some of the amazingness I've gotten to see over the last few weeks. It starts with a production in November of A Burial Place by my friend and fellow Crazytown writer Owen Panettieri. As an alumna of many a Panettieri reading and production, I'm always thrilled when I get to see a full production of one of his plays. It was a... Continue reading

On the Bandwagon By Sam Perwin Damien Chazelle's gorgeous film La La Land, about an actor and a musician who fall in love, dance, and sing their way through modern LA, is by no means perfect. You'd think, for all the praise it's been receiving, that it's the Citizen Kane of our time, but in truth, it's much more like the Singin' in the Rain of our time: a movie that believes wholeheartedly in the saving graces of music, dance, and movie magic. Watch that broken wrist, Ryan! There's been a lot of talk about the political situation we're currently... Continue reading

A New Writing Challenge by Sam Perwin One of my favorite quotes that I may or may not be mistakenly attributing to Stravinsky is "The more I limit myself, the more I free myself." (Google was no help). It's almost ironic coming from him, a composer who did so much to shatter boundaries of musical forms, but I like it because I think it's a quote about discipline and structure, particularly when it comes to the creative process. In Stravinsky's case, as in the case of many poets or lyricists, he's talking about the freedom of composing of composing within... Continue reading

On Giving Tuesday By Sam Perwin The materialistic orgy of the holiday season began, as it does every year, on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. It seems this year that stories of camp-outs, riots, and stampedes aren't nearly as prevalent, so I suppose that's something to be thankful for. Yet, if my inbox full of marketing ads from stores large and small are to be believed, the discounts running through the weekend (Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday) are as pervasive as ever. The antidote to this comes today, the day known as Giving Tuesday, when we're encouraged to take... Continue reading

Where Did You Have in Mind? By Sam Perwin I write this post from a sunny patio at The Ritz-Carlton in Naples, FL. We're here for a wedding and spending the week in Florida - my husband's parents live nearby on Sanibel Island, so we're visiting with them for a few days then driving to Miami to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Coming to Florida this time of year is nothing new for me, but coming to Naples, to the Ritz, especially right now, feels a little off. As I look around this hotel, I'm overwhelmed by privilege: by my... Continue reading

Working through the Unimaginable By Sam Perwin I am at a loss. Still. It's been a week and I'm not yet able to wrap my head around what happened to our country last Tuesday. And it's really not just about the vast Republican takeover (though that is depressing enough), it's about the man we just elected president. This is a man who represents the worst of us - the nationalism, the xenophobia, the isolationism, the racism, the egoism, the selfishness, the sexism, the anti-intellectualism. This man will be President of the United States. We should all be ashamed that this... Continue reading

In Case You Didn't Already Have Enough By Sam Perwin Hello Crazytown America. You all know where I stand in this election. I would venture 99% of you guys reading this blog feel similarly. But here's the actual most important thing that happens today (besides Hillary getting elected president): you. voting. Yes, you. Putting the ballot in the box.It matters more that you actually vote (for Hillary), than who you vote for (Hillary). I've written about this before, so now I'm just going full list. Here are some awesome things about voting (for the first female president of the United... Continue reading

A Guitar Player is (Re)born By Sam Perwin Almost two years ago on the eve of 2015, I wrote a New Year's post about some resolutions. The first one was to add to the special skills portion of my resume by learning to play the guitar. I was pretty gung-ho. I bought a guitar, found an awesome teacher, and was taking lessons weekly for the first two months of the year. Then, as I wrote in my 35th Birthday post, some major life stuff got in the way. My Mom's battle with cancer and her subsequent death consumed most of... Continue reading

The New Parenthood By Sam Perwin Sometimes you just want to be emotionally manipulated. I've just caught up on the first four episodes ofThis is Us, NBC's new tear-jerky emotional roller-coaster dramedy about (SPOILER ALERT) triplets and their parents. For anyone not caught up, the show follows four storylines, three of which feature grown triplets (well, technically, twins and one adopted sibling) all turning 36; the fourth features their parents, raising them in the 80's. We get glimpses into their lives simultaneously as we move back and forth between the past and the present. This twist is revealed at the... Continue reading

College Essay Season By Sam Perwin As many reading this blog already know, my "day job" is working as a private tutor. The vast majority of my clients hire me to prep them for standardized tests, and I get the occasional general school-help or specific school subject clients. Around this time of year, though, as November and January deadlines loom closer, many of the clients I've helped through the SAT or ACT turn to me for help with the the actual holy grail of college admissions: the college essay. As I explain frequently to my clients, standardized test scores are... Continue reading

Another Yom Kippur By Sam Perwin Tonight at sundown begins the more somber of the two Jewish High Holy Days, Yom Kippur. As I've written about before, my yearly gig singing in the Soho Synagogue choir has me thinking again about my Judaism. One of my tutoring clients asked me recently if I was Jewish (she is), and she shared a story about a clueless colleague of hers wishing her a "Happy Yom Kippur." To any non-Jews reading this, Yom Kippur is not typically a happy holiday - it's the day of atonement. Observant Jews fast from sundown to sundown,... Continue reading

A Milestone Birthday Comes and Goes By Sam Perwin Last year, when I turned 34, I wrote that I was already dreading my next birthday. I had decided long ago that 35 would be a moment of reckoning. Not a deadline for success, mind you, but I swore I'd have a conversation with myself about whether or not the artist's life was one I'd like to continue leading. I've always defined artistic success for myself as the ability to support myself solely through creative means - whether that's acting or writing, singing, or voiceover. While I've made money doing all... Continue reading

A Not So Perfect Pair By Sam Perwin My mother was nothing if not a feminist. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College class of 1971, and Boston College Law School soon after, she spent the beginning of her career working on Capitol Hill for such Democratic luminaries as Ben Rosenthal and Esther Peterson, both of whom fought tirelessly for the ERA. She helped Ellen Malcolm found EMILY’s List and was one of its first board members. My whole childhood was surrounded by back issues of Ms. magazine and educated, kick-ass women who created their own opportunities and careers for themselves.... Continue reading

A Trip to Gunnison Beach By Sam Perwin Directly south of New York harbor in New Jersey lie the Sandy Hook beaches. They're a very popular stretch of beaches for New Yorkers, given their proximity and a convenient high-speed ferry that will get you there from midtown in a mere 45 minutes. In the middle of this stretch lies Gunnison Beach, the only legal nude beach in the north east. This past weekend, my husband and I were invited by another couple, Jim and Nick - Gunnison veterans - to attend a friendly birthday gathering there for Nick. I'd say... Continue reading

August 23rd By Sam Perwin Today is August 23rd, 2016. It is my father's 68th birthday, and my parents' 46th wedding anniversary. It was always a cause for celebration in my family, for obvious reasons. As I've written before, my father was never one to celebrate birthdays because he always thought their universality made them, by definition, not a special occasion. He was always more concerned with celebrating hard-earned achievements instead of arbitrary dates on which we were born. I'm sure it came as a great relief to him when he could couple his birthday with his anniversary - something... Continue reading

Plus ça change.... By Sam Perwin One of my favorite New York phenomena is what I call “The Re-Reveal.” This occurs when scaffolding covered blocks or streets blanketed in that particularly garish, unforgiving shade of construction-orange suddenly get cleared. I relish that moment of coming upon a once shrouded section only to be stopped in my tracks by the shining polish of a building after its been cleaned, or the breathtakingly simple beauty of an uninterrupted stretch of a Manhattan Avenue. It reminds me of that hoariest of adages, “The only thing constant is change.” Yet, for all its superficial... Continue reading

On Debt By Sam Perwin My husband and I just finished the first season of Mr. Robot, which we'd been meaning to watch for a long time. It's a fascinating show that grapples with hoary themes like the lies we tell ourselves to save face, our public vs. private personas, and the deep wounds that our families leave us with, all shown through the lens of our increasingly digital world. The plot hinges on a plan to hack the "world's largest conglomorate" not-so-subtly named Evil Corp. They attempt to encrypt all their data and destroy any physical back-ups so that... Continue reading

A Public Service Announcement By Sam Perwin Yesterday, while riding my bike through Central Park, I was hit by a pedi-cab. Nothing tremendous happened - the impact wasn't even enough to knock me off my bike - but mostly I was shocked that the driver was looking at his phone and had allowed himself to roll perpendicularly into the bike lane. He simply wasn't paying attention. In typical New York fashion, I yelled some iteration of "Watch where you're fucking going!" and rode off. I was lucky neither of us had been going particularly fast at the time. But the... Continue reading

A Public Service Announcement By Sam Perwin Yesterday, while riding my bike through Central Park, I was hit by a pedi-cab. Nothing tremendous happened - the impact wasn't even enough to knock me off my bike - but mostly I was shocked that the driver was looking at his phone and had allowed himself to roll perpendicularly into the bike lane. He simply wasn't paying attention. In typical New York fashion, I yelled some iteration of "Watch where you're fucking going!" and rode off. I was lucky neither of us had been going particularly fast at the time. But the... Continue reading

In Which We Explore the 9-5 Schedule By Sam Perwin Tutoring in the summer is a strange phenomenon. Students are mostly of the test-prep variety, since school's out, and schedule-wise, it's completely reversed for the same reason. Unlike during the school year, when afternoons, nights, and weekends are the prime spots, I end up doing most summer tutoring during the day. Many students whose families have beach houses tend to flee for the weekend, so summer tutoring can feel, oddly enough, like a typical 9-5. Similarly, since auditions are few and far between, over the past few weeks I've started... Continue reading

The Natural Order of Making Art By Sam Perwin They say theater is the most collaborative of arts, bringing together the widest variety of people in order to make the magic happen. Writers, Directors, Actors, Designers, Technicians, Dressers, the list goes on and on and on. In a work's beginning though, particularly from the writing side, things can feel quite isolating. Writing is the loneliest of the arts, solitary by its very nature. Playwrights face this same problem, though we have a natural antidote to the loneliness: the table read. To those uninitiated, the table read is usually a small,... Continue reading

Come Again No More By Sam Perwin Last week was rough. Real rough. Charles Blow called it "A Week from Hell" in The New York Times, asserting "This is not a level of stress and strain that a civil society can long endure." Social Media has naturally been a sounding board for all the best and worst aspects of these tragedies in St. Paul, Baton Rouge, and Dallas. All week on various feeds I watched post after post scroll by from my fellow privileged, white, liberal friends asking what they can do to help support their friends of color during... Continue reading

1776, Hamilton, and the American Experiment By Sam Perwin It's a really good time to be both an American History buff and a musical theater nerd. The runaway success of a little musical called Hamilton has re-introduced the idea to an entire new generation that our founding fathers weren't perfect, all-knowing demi-gods, but rather complex, flawed men who did the best they could to create a country under impossible circumstances. Of course, the original broadway musical to dramatize the proceedings of the continental congress (a hefty feat in and of itself) was 1776, which also won the Tony for best... Continue reading

Getting to Know Why this Musical Makes me Cry By Sam Perwin Last year, while visiting my very sick mother, I made her promise to get better so we could go see the new revival of The King & I. I remember her face lighting up with the prospect, only to watch it fall again. By that time, I think she knew she wasn’t going to get better, even though the rest of us were still very much in denial about how far and how quickly her cancer had advanced. She died a month later. Mom always loved that show.... Continue reading