Bill Waxman – Ted Mills

DIJO Productions mounts Margulies’ ‘Brooklyn Boy’

January 2, 2015August 10, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Brooklyn Boy Eric Weiss (Ed Giron) is not impressed by casting agent Aden Hailu and aspiring actor Sean Jackson.

It’s that old saying, you can’t go home again.”

That’s how director Bill Waxman sums up the theme to “Brooklyn Boy,” the Donald Margulies play that opens this coming Thursday at Carpinteria’s Plaza Playhouse Theater. In this 2005 play, Eric Weiss (played by DIJO regular Ed Giron) is an author with critical respect but without the money to show for it. That is, until he writes a semi-autobiographical novel and finds himself shooting toward fame, and finds that, after all the time spent waiting for it to happen, he is not prepared.

At Long Last Love – BILL WAXMAN’S NEW PLAY RIFFS ON LOVE IN THE GOLDEN YEARS

May 2, 2014November 30, 2022 tedmills Leave a comment

The cast of "The Coot Elimination Committee" includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim heard that phrase and right then and there Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith. — The cast of “The Coot Elimination Committee” includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith.

Writer and director Bill Waxman was visiting his wife’s stepmother and significant other in a retirement community in Palm Springs. That’s where he heard about a committee that had been established to rid their environs of a disruptive duck-like bird: The Coot Elimination Committee.

“It was like a gift,” Mr. Waxman says. “I heard that phrase and right then and there I thought, this is a play. I came home and sat down and about a month later I had the play. It rolled right out.”