January 16

Helping a buddy out (just because):

Marc Acito

Novelist, humorist and playwright Marc Acito (b. 1966) hails from Bayonne, New Jersey. His comic novel How I Paid for College* (2005, available in various E-reader formats) won numerous awards for fiction and went on to achieve cult status. Last month saw the premiere run of his monologue-with-songs version. In 2008 Acito published an equally popular sequel. He is also the writer of the syndicated humor column "The Gospel According to Marc", which ran for several years in nineteen gay publications, earning him the moniker, the “gay Dave Barry.”

*Editor’s Choice – The New York Times, and the perfect book to lift your spirits if you’re stuck at home with a cold or the flu.

Last September saw the world premiere of Allegiance, a musical for which Marc wrote the book. Among the leading cast members was George Takai, an openly gay actor best known for his turn as Mr. Sulu in Star Trek. The Allegiance story is set during the Japanese American internment of World War II, and its run broke the all-time box office record for San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. The production is being prepped for Broadway.

Acito’s play, Birds of a Feather, which tells the true story of the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo, received the Helen Hayes Award for the Best New Play of 2012 for its world premiere at the Hub Theatre in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC.

Marc supplied the book and additional lyrics for the musical adaptation of E. M. Forster’s novel, A Room with a View, which received its world premiere last March at the Old Globe Theatre. As a journalist, Marc is a popular commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and has written about theatre for the New York Times, American Theatre and Playbill. His humorous essays have appeared in leading media outlets.

A nationally recognized expert on story structure for emerging writers of all genres, he now teaches at New York University. Acito, a former professional opera singer, is openly gay and is married to his partner, Floyd Sklaver.


Some examples from his The Gospel According to Marc series of essays:

Since getting married in Canada, Floyd and I have received as many questions as congratulations. Questions like: "Did he get down on his knees to propose?"

Answer: "Yes, but he was already down there."

And...at the end of our six-hour trip home from British Columbia I missed our exit, and Floyd started getting pissy about it.

I reminded him that our marriage vows included a promise to be patient and understanding.

“That was in Canada,” Floyd grumbled.

And:

You can idle away as many hours as you want cultivating a beautiful garden, and you'll get compliments galore. But spend the same amount of time cultivating a beautiful body, and everyone calls you shallow and narcissistic. Of course, they also call you for dates. Critics of beauty fail to understand that admiring a gorgeous person is one of life's great pleasures. I, for one, regularly endure The Other Half just so I can fantasize about sub-letting space in Mario Lopez's dimples.

Mr. Acito accepts his Helen Hayes Award: