Monologuist Todd Alcott grew up in an affluent subdivision in Crystal Lake. His dad worked in the Loop in the ad biz; his mother taught in the Evanston school district. “The assumption was that everything would be fine,” Alcott says.
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He opened his own commuter airline. “They had lots of stock certificates but no planes,” Alcott says. Then he wrote a screenplay called Baa Baa, Black Sheep, based on the memoirs of WWII flying ace Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron. His screenplay was rejected, yet a couple years later Boyington’s story became a TV series called Baa Baa Black Sheep. To this day Alcott’s father claims it was his idea, but he never made a dime.
The story of his family’s slow, painful economic descent, and his accompanying journey into despair, is the subject of Alcott’s one-person dark comedy Living in Flames. Alcott plays Alcott, an exceptionally neurotic guy trying to make sense of his life while eking out a living in that most brutal of cities, New York.
Gradually his work became more overtly autobiographical. He began writing pieces that explored his feelings of helplessness and paranoia. Then he began discussing his father. The more honest Alcott became the more laughs he got and the more people came up to him after the show. “I was shocked at how many people had the exact same experience.”
