All my characters are real even the ones I make up from scratch. Like the duality of the acting I teach, the universe of the character is real and every decision you make is true to the universe, but never forget you are on stage and the audience is traveling with you. In my mind the pink alligator-john (from Three Stories), the singing armadillo-Austin ‘Dillo (From Don’t Mess with Texas, Texas Baby), the severed head-Roy (from the film A Boy and His Head) are all real to me and at the same time they are me. I am creator, actor and audience.

Joe Rosenberg, my mentor, used to invite me over to his office for lunch everyday. I called it my standing invitation, because stuff was always piled in all the chairs but JR’s.(Joe Rosenberg.) This was during the time we were building up The South Texas Performance Company in Corpus Christi and renovating an old union hall under the Harbor Bridge we named The Place.

JR would make soups for our lunch. There was a single electric burner that lived on the counter by sink in the kitchen turned copy room. In the dish drainer was two garage-sale pans, a family heirloom skillet, two old chipped bowls, two coffee cups from the Mercado in Mexico, many un-matching spoons and forks and one great big knife.

I remember the burner from my college days, my first college days in fact, January 1981. That was my second semester at Texas A & I. Sucking in data, opinions, and perspectives for later reshuffling was my existence. That and doing everything "they" would let me do in the theaters. "They" were two of the most influential people in my life and life long friends, the soon-to-be Dr. David T. Deacon and JR, Dr. Joe Rosenberg.

JR taught Script Analyses at 8:00 AM Monday, Wednesday and Friday. No college courses should be taught at 8:00 AM except for R.O.T. C. Physical Training classes. (They seem to like it.) Script Analyses, Art History, and Music History are all taught at 8:00 AM!

Having dropped many early morning college courses since graduating from high school in 1978, I knew better than to take the Script Analyses class. JR said he would make me coffee every class. All I had to do was show up and bring a cup, which I could rinse out and leave in his office. Every class JR brought the burner, a garage-sale pan, two cups, a spoon and a jar of Nestles’ Classico Instant Coffee. He bought the coffee in Mexico. I never missed a class.

This teacher figured out my character. Feed me and I will listen. Others in my life will come to this conclusion too.

During a lunch in 1994 JR said something that stuck. Just like me, if he wasn’t angry, JR talked non-stop. (I talk even more when I’m angry, JR did not. A difference.) I had been reading one or JR’s new scripts. He always let me read his new scripts. He wanted to know what I saw in them. I never let him read mine. He had to come to the show and then we would talk about the script. My thinking was and is, I’m not a writer to read, but a writer to be watched. I wish I would have let him read my scripts. He would have liked that.

JR slurped his soup and asked if I had looked at a new scene he wrote. I said about half tacky, "This is just you JR."

He did even look up from his soup and said, "We all right about ourselves. That is the story we have to tell. The sooner you get past all the bull shit the sooner you will learn."

The soup was my favorite of JR’s soups. Lima bean soup with cauliflower, onion, bell pepper, mushrooms, caraway seeds and JR special ingredient, instant chicken soup whittled of an instant soup bar he bought in Mexico.

Vegetables for the soup were always bought that day at the little open air market at Morgan and 19th Streets. -jdj-