Edoardo Ballerini

My freshman year at Wesleyan a friend told me that I was not the type of person to ask, “What’s for lunch?” but rather, “What is lunch?”  I took it as a compliment.  Though I’ve never been referred to as a genius, I’ve always aspired to use my brain whenever appropriate, and the meaning of lunch is as worthy a topic as any other.

Today I went back to class for the first time in a quite a while.  In a stinging twist of irony it was held in the same room where I first studied acting.  The musty scent of old furniture and well-worn set pieces filled the air, and tears came to my eyes.  I was transported back in time, filled with remembrances of a clueless young man who nevertheless knew that he wanted to inhabit this strange world of props and cues and was willing to scrape nickels together in order to do so. Read more…

As I sat in the lobby of New York’s Public Theater I noticed two people laughing.  It was my good fortune to have been to the Public twice in one week, and I recalled that on my previous visit, then, too, people were laughing.  And I thought, “The lobby of the Public Theater is a remarkably happy place.”  It was so strong a feeling that I wanted to share it.  I reached for my phone to call someone.  But as I slipped my hand into my pocket a woman shrieked, and I was distracted. Read more…