I unabashedly love the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Community, craft, the chance to make something real and the occasional unsettling personal revelation you didn’t ask for but probably needed. It’s all here.
I first participated in 2024, producing my friend Natalie’s show I’LL BE WITH YOU IN A MINUTE. I’d attended before, of course, as a civilian. The way you attend a party at someone else’s house before you realize you might actually want to throw one. During that festival I met fellow artists, went to twelve shows and learned in real time what it takes to produce a play. I came out of it knowing two things: I wanted more of this and I was woefully underprepared for how much of this I wanted.
2025 answered that call. I produced and performed in stuck, a two-hander that exists because of Sam Ciavarella, who not only suggested we keep our reserved theater when my original production collapsed, but arrived two weeks later with the story idea that became the show and brought in her brother Brandon Ciavarella to write it. Without them, there is no stuck.
The show came together in 35 days under conditions that would have broken a sensible person: no locked script when tickets went on sale, no sound designer and a director who dropped out the day of our first table read: they’d booked a major film, the sort of thing you can only applaud while internally screaming. We found our director Rosalind Bevan with just over a month left and she helped us build something special out of controlled chaos. Five sold-out performances. A Hollywood Fringe Exchange Award with Fringe Italia Off. Not bad for a show I was still memorizing ten days before we opened.
That same year I attended 37 shows and was transformed by more than a few. Spencer Weitzel and Callie Ott in DOG OF CARNAGE stopped me cold. The kind of performances that make you sit in your car afterward because you’re not ready to re-enter the world. I walked out having made a private decision: these people will be my friends. A year later I cast Spencer in my own show. Callie asked me to be in her short film. This is what happens when you pay attention at the Fringe.
I also saw remarkable work from Mark Vigeant, Hailey McAfee, Woody Fu, Will McFadden, Mandy Rubeli, James Ferrero, Ann Noble and Molly Sharpe – artists who collectively raised the bar of what I thought I could attempt. Edinburgh Fringe in 2026 pushed it further. I came home certain of one thing: I needed to write a play.
So here we are. COFFEE DATE is my first play. I wrote it, I’m in it and I’ve applied nearly everything I’ve learned about what works and what detonates beautifully in your face. I built a full team: a producing partner, a director, a sound designer, a graphic designer whose work holds its own against nearly 500 shows at this festival. In doing so, I freed myself to focus on the writing and acting. I joined the team in the casting process, which I’d never done before and discovered it’s one of the most instructive things an actor can do for themselves.
I’ve heard the Fringe called an amateur arts festival. Maybe that was true in the past, but allow me to disagree, loudly and with specifics: there are working actors here constantly sharpening their craft. TV writers whose credits span Hulu, Netflix and network television developing new work under festival conditions. Streaming executives in the audience, quietly taking notes. Just yesterday I spotted one of the biggest actors in network television at one performance and a legendary science fiction writer at another. Nobody announced themselves. That’s kind of the point.
The Hollywood Fringe is the largest arts festival in Los Angeles and it has a way of arriving in your life at exactly the right moment, whether or not you planned it that way. Show up. Pay attention. Stay open.
The rest tends to take care of itself.
It’s two days out from the first preview of COFFEE DATE on the Main Stage at the Broadwater as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival and I’m filled with so much.
Nerves. Excitement. Joy. Gratitude. All of it at once.
Last August the seed of this play was planted while I was sitting in an Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland. Two women at the table next to me were watching videos loudly on their phones, passing them back and forth having the best time. I was grumpy after three terrible shows at the Fringe, drenched in sweat on one of the hottest days the city had seen in years and hungry. Hangry, if we’re being honest.
I wanted to say something. But I’m not an insane person and I knew how fragile I was in that moment. This was a me problem.
But then I played it out in my head. What if I did say something? What would they say back? It dawned on me: their argument for why they should be able to play videos at dinner was stronger than mine.
The idea percolated. A meet cute in a cafe. A guy complaining to a woman about her phone. Instead of being defensive, she’s curious about why he’s acting the way he is. A connection forms. He opens up, apologizes, shows some vulnerability. They agree to meet again under better circumstances.
That’s not what COFFEE DATE is. But it’s where it began. Two souls meeting under unusual circumstances. Isn’t that what dating is these days anyway?
What surprised me most is the evolution. It began as a simple scene in a coffee shop. Over ten drafts COFFEE DATE evolved into a farcical romcom with a heart. It goes extreme at times, as I think all great plays should, but it’s grounded in a real sense of hope.
What I learned about myself along the way may be the biggest surprise of all. I’ve spent the last ten years expanding my capacity for vulnerability, finding greater curiosity in others and believing in the everlasting possibility of love. Writing this play expanded my heart in ways I didn’t know were possible. Even in a play where humor and deflection come first.
Here’s the one thing I know for certain: if you don’t risk a broken heart, you have no chance at a full one.
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In a few short days, we’ll start revealing the production team and cast behind COFFEE DATE, my new play at the 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Now feels like a good time to share how we got here.
I’ve never written a play. Until three years ago, I hadn’t written much fiction at all. In a previous life, I was a journalist, writing and editing for my old company CBR.com (Comic Book Resources, which I sold in 2016). But long-form fiction? Not something I did or believed I could do. It just didn’t feel like “how I worked.” At least, that’s what I told myself.
Three years ago, I got into a two-week actors intensive with IAMA Theatre in Atwater Village. There I met Christian Durso, a wonderful writer who led a two-day writing workshop as part of the program.
On day one he asked us to introduce ourselves and say whether we considered ourselves writers. When it was my turn, I talked about my journalism background, then explained why it didn’t count—no fiction, no daily writing, no focus, no training, etc.
Christian simply said, “You’re a writer.”
Since then, I’ve read a lot about writing, devoured plays and screenplays and actually written. In the past three years, I’ve written more than I ever did before, even as a journalist. Those early attempts weren’t great, but I learned a ton along the way.
Last August, I was in Edinburgh producing Natalie Grove’s JELLO BRAIN at the Fringe. One day, after seeing four shows in record heat, I ducked into a restaurant for dinner and a little quiet. I was hot, tired, overstimulated. All I wanted was to eat in peace.
That was not to be.
I found a great Indian spot and was seated next to two women having a quiet conversation, until halfway through their meal when one started watching videos on her phone at full volume. Then she passed it to her friend, so I got to hear everything twice.
I was hot. Hungry. Exhausted. Already grumpy. In my head, I started arguing with them: Can you please turn that down? You’re being rude.
I grew increasingly annoyed at the casual disregard for shared space – this sound trespass – and wanted to say something, but didn’t want to be “that guy.” I knew being grumpy this was probably a me problem. So I sat there and stewed, silently wishing mild IBS symptoms in their future.
At first it felt like a violation, someone else’s noise invading my thoughts, but then, against my will, it became material.
I started arguing their side. How would they respond if I actually spoke up? The counterargument in my head got more compelling. I was losing my own argument and it made me laugh. Suddenly, it felt like a scene: a grumpy guy fully embracing his inner Karen in public, only to be immediately put in his place.
That idea percolated for a week, until one free evening in Wrexham, Wales, I went to a pub and wrote. It started as a simple conversation in a coffee shop between a man and a woman. Twelve pages in, it turned into a meet-cute. I figured maybe it could work as a short play or a romcom sketch.
But I couldn’t turn my brain off. The coffee shop filled with characters. It wasn’t just Man and Woman anymore, it was Henry and Laura and Roger and Tizzy. Relationships took shape. Thoughts on dating in middle life poured in. I kept writing and three weeks later, during a trip to Napa to write at a friend’s vineyard, I had a 56-page vomit draft of a play called Your Phone Is Much Too Loud.
Seven months and nine drafts later, this naughty romcom called COFFEE DATE is in rehearsals with an incredible team and I’m still pinching myself. Everyone is deeply invested in this little story about finding love in middle life and they’re making it better, making me look so good. Christian came on as my dramaturg, guiding me through the first five drafts and once director Julia Christgau signed on, she took over that role, helping me refine the script into what it is today. Now I get to hear it out loud and fine-tune it to the voices of our cast.
It’s been an incredible start to rehearsals and it’s only getting better.
I’ll share more about COFFEE DATE in the coming weeks, but for now, follow COFFEE DATE on Instagram and come see the show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June. Seven performances at the Broadwater Main Stage. Hope to see you there.
