Beginnings
I was born on November 19th, 1977 in the town of New Paltz, New York. My parents, Lesley Stoller and Myla Pitt, were living in New Paltz while my mother was studying there. My mother graduated from SUNY New Paltz in 1979, and the three of us moved down to the Long Island suburb of Great Neck.
I was always a very verbal child; among my earliest interests were writing, singing, performing. When I was four, I wrote a book called Tokiss. The title came from a word I made up, meaning boy. The story was about a lonely boy who needed someone to play with. I was overjoyed when, two years later, my family was joined by another tokiss: my brother Sam. He was born at home, and as a six-year-old I was present for his birth.
I went to the Lakeville elementary school in Great Neck, and then Great Neck South Middle. When I was twelve, my grandpa Nat published a collection of my writings, under the title Rhymes and Reasons. The back cover featured a picture of me with my little brother.
In eighth grade, I became very involved with Levels, a youth center in Great Neck. (For a list of all the plays in which I performed, click here.) There I found my social niche for the first time, and met many people who still are among my dearest friends. At age thirteen, I chose to have a bar mitzvah (although I had not had a religious upbringing, I developed an interest in my Jewish heritage at that time). We celebrated my rite of passage at the Ethical Humanist Society.
At Great Neck South High School, I continued to be active in the arts. I acted and directed for the drama club, contributed stories and poems to the literary magazine, wrote a regular column for the school newspaper.
A lot of major shifts in my life happened while I was in high school. In the summer of 1992, my family moved from our small two-bedroom apartment to a house on Nassau Road. In January 1993, my sister Evelyn was born; she was named for my grandmother, Evelyn Pitt, who had died the previous year. In October of 1993, I began dating Wendy (who is now my wife).
In 1994, both my grandpa Nat and my grandma Rose died. That was a very hard time for me. My essay about the death of my grandpa Nat, which I submitted to the school newspaper as a personal column, reflected a lot of my thoughts and feelings at the time.
Growing Up
I graduated from South High in 1995, and that fall I began my studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I was still constantly performing: over the course of my four years at Penn I performed with such diverse groups as the experimental theatre company, the African American Arts Alliance, the improv troupe, a Christian singing group, and an all-male musical comedy troupe.
I majored in Philosophy and Theatre Arts at Penn, with minors in Religious Studies and Ancient History. As a Theatre Arts major, I became very involved with Penn's Theatre Arts Program. I was on the Student Theatre Arts Board (STAB), and I had staff positions on several productions.
During the summers while I was in college, I kept going back to Levels and directing original pieces there. In 1997 I wrote my first full-length musical, a new adaptation of Pinocchio. It was produced at Levels that summer; I directed the show and I also appeared as Geppetto in the production. In 1998 I had a busy summer: I directed and starred in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens at Levels; I worked as a literary intern at the American Place Theatre in New York City; and, at the end of the summer, I traveled to Scotland to perform with the Penn Theatre Arts Program in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
For my senior thesis project in Theatre Arts, I directed a production of Prometheus Bound at Penn (combining my interests in drama, classical culture, philosophy and religion). I graduated with honors in May 1999.
After graduation, I moved into a Manhattan apartment with my girlfriend Wendy and my best friend Jamie. That first year out of college, I worked at Alphagram Learning Materials. I also began participating in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where I studied as a composer-lyricist under Skip Kennon.
The New Millennium
In the summer of 2000, Wendy and I moved to Brooklyn. (Jamie married his partner Rachel, and the two of them moved to the Lower East Side.) Wendy and I both entered MFA programs that fall: I was studying in NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, and she was studying poetry at Hunter. That October, having been together for almost eight years, Wendy and I decided to get married.
Wendy and I were married on August 19th, 2001. Our wedding ceremony and reception were at the Ethical Humanist Society; the same place where I had celebrated my bar mitzvah, a decade before. The ceremony was performed by Len Yoswein, a close friend of my late grandpa, who had officiated at other weddings in my family.
The following year,
my second year at NYU, I collaborated with Jessica Fogle to write my thesis
musical: a show called Benjamin Starling . I also began my career as a teaching artist, working for the Kids Project. I had always been interested in working with young people, at least as far back as my years at Levels, but this was my first opportunity to develop my own philosophy and practice as an educator.
In the spring of
2002, NYU produced a reading of Benjamin Starling, and I received my MFA in Musical Theatre Writing.
After graduation, I devoted myself full-time to my work as a teaching
artist. I still perform disability-awareness programs for the Kids
Project; I also teach literacy, acting, songwriting, playwriting, and
other skills for various arts organizations. (For more information on what I do, click over to my Teaching section.)
In 2004, Wendy and I both made progress in our careers as writers. Benjamin Starling received a full production at the
Spirit of Broadway Theatre in Norwich, Connecticut, in January. And in the spring, Wendy published her first collection of poems: Epicenter.
We lived in Brooklyn for six years. In the summer of 2006,
we bought an apartment in Bayside, Queens. Wendy and I are still doing our work as teachers and writers. Our baby boy, Benjamin Nathan, was born in January 2007.