Monday

Posted by DCA Theater on February 1, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, Wiggerlover [white boy + black dad = grey areas]

by James Anthony Zoccoli (Jaz), Actor/Writer of Wiggerlover [white boy + black dad = grey areas]

WHAT ARE YOU?

“Half-Italian, half-Polish, all Black.”  That’s my joke.

It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true…& truth is stranger than fiction.

As a kid, I was pretty darn funny & pretty darn smart: smart enough to know better than to feel responsible for the fact that my mother & father were divorced when I was three years old; funny enough to be able to keep a sense of humor when times got tough.

If humor is a defense mechanism, I was Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and the television was my Shaolin Temple.  His style was Tiger.  Mine was Python.  Monty Python.  My special move would have been the Banana Split.  My impossible mission was to make my family laugh.  I was James Bond in a Tennessee Tuxedo; my drink was a Tom & Jerry.

Though I didn’t know why, I knew at a young age that Chicago was called “The Second City” & I was proud that our town was the birthplace of SCTV.

After the divorce, my mom & I moved from Orland Park to Rogers Park.

We zigged & zagged; South Side to North Side & back again…

Then, my mom married my dad & we moved to Hyde Park.

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