Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (Lionel Stander)

This was a staged reading of the play written in the 1970s about the HUAC hearings in the 1950s where Hollywood actors, directors, producers and writers were summoned to Washington to "call out the Communist propagandists in the American Dream Machine of Hollywood." Artists were forced to testify about associations going back 20 years. Such questioning resulted in the infamous Hollywood Blacklist. The damage done to the reputations of good men and women was immense and in most cases irretrievable.

I had the pleasure of playing Lionel Stander in this staged reading under the direction of John G. Hertzler.