Will Storr, in The Science of Storytelling, wrote, “Who we are is how we’re broken,” while mythologist Joseph Campbell said, “The only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections.” By those metrics, I am both profoundly broken and delightfully imperfect.
A Faded Memory
My earliest memory is a blurry vignette: seven years old, sitting in the backseat of a faded fifties Buick parked on a desolate road in Missouri. My mother, leaning out the window, pleads with my father. Peeking out the back, I see his silhouette in the rain, standing in a ditch, holding a gun to his head. When your childhood begins with a suicide attempt, you know the road ahead won’t be smooth.
The Life I Imagined
I often daydreamed about being born into a loving Jewish family in New York—Reformed, not Orthodox. In this fantasy, I would graduate Magna Cum Laude from Yale, backpack across Europe, and land a dream job in a glass high-rise after dazzling a literary agent with my Flaubert expertise. Every Friday, I’d close my office door to take a call from my proud father.
The Reality I Got
Instead, I was born a gentile in Iowa City, Iowa—voted the least Jewish place on earth by American Hebrew Magazine. My father was a “psychopath light,” my mother a resilient first-grade teacher. It was the year Disneyland opened, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and The Honeymooners reigned supreme on TV. My father must have drawn inspiration from that show’s domestic violence because my mother frequently covered her bruises with makeup and dignity.
The Disposable Academic
According to my father, in 1959, the University of Iowa offered him tenure and a full professorship. He claimed he turned it down out of principle. The truth? He was a PhD-less adjunct, disposable and discarded by the university. Yet, even in his nineties, living in a crummy retirement home, he introduced himself as “a retired professor from the University of Iowa,” a place he hadn’t worked in six decades.
Bay City Blues
After Iowa, we landed in Bay City, Michigan—a dying industrial town whose only claim to fame was Madonna, who called it “smelly.” We were there at the same time, but our childhoods never crossed paths. I grew up in a clapboard house and was a latchkey kid, coming home to an empty house most days. One afternoon, I opened the door and immediately sensed something was wrong. The organ—an ugly upright no one ever played—was gone. I followed the drag marks on the pink, threadbare carpet down to the basement, where I found it smashed to pieces. My father had taken a sledgehammer to it, leaving a chaos of debris for his kids to see. What compels a man to destroy a musical instrument on his lunch break?
Childhood Rules and Nightmares
My siblings and I weren’t allowed out of bed at night without permission. My bedroom was directly across from the bathroom, but crossing that short gap required shouting, “I have to go to the bathroom!” until my father woke up and granted permission. The result? Sleep deprivation and a range of Freudian urinary challenges.
At school, I fared no better. Mrs. Burns, my third-grade teacher, introduced us to duck-and-cover drills. She claimed anyone near an atomic blast would turn into a “marbleized carbon shadow,” and ducking under our desks would somehow save us. One day, she canceled class abruptly, tearfully telling us to go home. On the way, my older brother ran up, shouting, “They killed the President!” I cheered—it was a far better outcome than being vaporized.
A House of Horrors
A few days after the assassination, my terrified mother packed us into her VW Bug and tried to flee. My father blocked the driveway, kicked in the car door, and later grabbed his shotgun. The cops hauled him off to jail, but an apathetic psychiatrist deemed him sane and sent him home—with the gun.
As the middle child, I emerged neurotic and prone to sleepwalking. I struggled in school, couldn’t spell, and found algebra an inscrutable torture. My father’s encouragement came in the form of slaps when my report card didn’t meet his expectations. Spoiler: it didn’t help.
A House Without Books
Despite their college degrees, my parents weren’t big readers. Our house was almost devoid of books. The rare exceptions were my father’s collection of economic doomsday tomes, predicting disaster year after year. Each failed prophecy was swiftly replaced with another.
Family Drives and Lone Wolves
Sundays meant piling into my dad’s Chevy Bel Air for “family drives.” With a shotgun in the trunk and his endless self-praise as our soundtrack, my father regaled us with tales of his lone-wolf ethos. Once, after a female driver cut him off, he chased her down, forced her to stop and spit on her windshield. Another time, he attempted to run over my brother. To cap it off, he’d yell at my mother, “Don’t act like a Jew,” though she wasn’t remotely Jewish. These drives left me with strange ideas about wolves.
High School Humiliation
Before entering high school, I took an IQ test that allegedly screened for intelligence. Unfortunately, my parents’ epic fight the night before left me mentally wrecked. I bombed the test and spent my first year in remedial classes. By the end of my sophomore year, a jaded advisor asked about my post-graduation plans. When I said college, he laughed so hard something came out of his nose.
The Mary Chronicles
Dating wasn’t on my radar—girls generally avoid the sons of suicidal, wife-beating twits. But Mary, a blonde with a Hapsburg jaw, ignored the memo. She tried converting me to Catholicism, using her enthusiasm for the “triune God” as bait. Her pitch made little sense to someone who couldn’t grasp algebra, but the way she said, “Father, Son, and Hoooooolly-Ghost” was oddly alluring. Our first date was Bananas—the Woody Allen movie. She didn’t find it funny. Nor did she like Buster Keaton - my hero. During that first date, I was so nervous that I left the car lights on, killing the battery, and had to call my father—a big mistake. After jumping the car, he threw his usual tantrum and confiscated my keys. Religion and dating: both failures.
Discovering Geometry
High school wasn’t a total loss. A counselor, likely trying to expedite my exit, suggested geometry. Miraculously, it clicked. By the semester’s end, I was tutoring other students and had a report card reading D, F, D, C, and an A in geometry. For the first time, I felt competent, even if my father celebrated my progress with more slaps.
The Right to Try
My high school GPA was pathetic, and my SAT score was equally dire. College seemed out of reach until I found Northern Michigan University. Their open-door “right to try” policy admitted anyone, provided they achieved a “C” average by Christmas—or faced expulsion. At 18, I left my chaotic family behind, boarding a Greyhound to Marquette, Michigan. On my first night, the dorms blared with music and laughter. It was blissfully quiet for me—a peace I hadn’t known.
An Accidental Thespian
The next day, a disinterested advisor asked about my major. I drew a blank. When he prodded me about my high school experiences, I offhandedly mentioned a school play. His eyes lit up—finally, a direction. I was declared a theatre major despite my family’s complete disinterest in the arts. Looking back, perhaps my father’s penchant for sledgehammering organs could be considered avant-garde performance art.
Shakespeare, Dyslexia, and Survival
In my first college class, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare was a foreign language in my remedial high school, and my dyslexia didn’t help. Back then, you weren’t called an “out-of-the-box thinker.” You were just “dumb.” It seemed my college career wouldn’t make it to Thanksgiving—until I discovered a library recording of the play. By listening instead of reading, I finally made sense of it.
A Misguided Passion
Despite my passion for theatre, I lacked talent as an actor. I memorized lines and hit my marks, but my delivery was… let’s call it “unique.” A director once quipped, “Do it again—this time in the order it’s written.” Things didn’t improve after a bout of viral encephalitis during my junior year. The illness left me with lingering issues: stammering, hesitation, and occasional aphasia. Acting was no longer an option, but theatre wasn’t done with me yet.
Graduation, Gold Tassels, and Podunk Pride
Graduating Cum Laude from Northern Michigan was a triumph—no longer “right to try.” I showed my honors tassel to my parents. My father, unimpressed, sneered, “Of course, you graduated with honors—you went to a Podunk-U.” Returning home penniless for the summer proved disastrous. Still clinging to the dream of acting, I auditioned for MFA programs. The University of Illinois was the only school interested. Unfortunately, they offered no financial aid, and my mother refused to co-sign my loans without my father’s permission.
Silly Little Billy
When I asked my father for help, he responded with a childish rumba, singing, “Silly Little Billy, Not Looking Right, Not Looking Left!” Then, in a rage, he shredded my loan application. I punched him in the mouth. He retaliated with slaps and shouts, and I fled into what I thought would be homelessness. Luckily, my sister tracked me down the next day with good news: Illinois had offered me a modest scholarship and tuition waiver. My father dismissed it as a “C-list” offer, but I didn’t care. I was going to graduate school.
Finding Lucy
During my first year at Illinois, I joined an outdoor drama in Alabama. I played a Confederate soldier with an abysmal accent. The actors were housed at the University of Montevallo, a former plantation. One sweltering day, while wandering the quad, I met Lucy. She had a soft Southern drawl, intelligent green eyes, and tiny ears that made her sunglasses slip. I responded to her friendliness with my usual snide quip: “It’s a free country.” Subtext: “Stay away—I’m damaged goods.” She didn’t take the hint.
That evening, we sat under a magnolia tree. I told her everything—my father’s shotgun, the abuse, the smashed organ, the nightly permission to pee. She listened, then shared her own stories. Lucy, too, came from a troubled family. A few days later, she introduced me to her parents. Billie Jean, her mother, was a faded cheerleader with a sharp tongue who ran a beauty shop. Her father, Itchy, was a gentle ex-baseball player who spat black tobacco juice into colorful Dixie cups. Lucy’s brothers were rabid Alabama fans, shouting “Roll Tide!” at random. Despite the chaos, Lucy was brilliant, well-read, and unexpectedly grounded. Over the next two and a half years, we dated long-distance. And yes, I became an Alabama fan. Roll Tide!
Discovering Playwriting
I’m unsure what compelled me to write my first play—perhaps self-therapy. Like geometry, telling a well-structured story made sense to me. Of course, my first play was about my bizarre, dysfunctional family. With no training or guidance, I winged it. When I showed my typo-ridden draft to a playwriting professor at the University of Illinois, he gleefully declared, “You’re no writer.” I threw the script away. That would’ve been the end if Broadway playwright Milan Stitt hadn’t visited as a guest artist. I retrieved my pages from the trash, fixed the typos to the best of my dyslexic ability, and asked him to read it. To my astonishment, he invited me to study playwriting under him and Lanford Wilson at New York’s Circle Repertory Theatre.
Life in a Fleapit
After graduation, I arrived in New York City with a few hundred bucks and a manual typewriter. I found a room at the Benjamin Franklin, a filthy transient hotel on Broadway and 77th. My ten-by-ten cell came with a stained mattress, a battered sink, and cockroaches that crawled on me at night. Meals had to be guarded or shared with the uninvited. I worked the midnight to 8 AM shift washing limos, never missing a day despite exhaustion. Eventually, I moved to a room with a Broadway view, which felt luxurious by comparison. My evenings were spent wandering Manhattan, where one night, I stumbled upon John Lennon’s assassination outside the Dakota Building.
A Comedic Revelation
For my first play at Circle Rep, I wrote a somber father-son drama, complete with an on-stage suicide attempt. It was Death of a Salesman meets Hermann Göring. I hoped to move the audience to tears, but instead, they laughed. I was devastated—this was serious! During the talkback, someone wiping away tears of laughter said, “You meant this to be a dark comedy, right?” I had no idea what a dark comedy was but quickly replied, “Yes.” That’s how I learned I could write funny.
Lucy Comes to New York
One day, Lucy called and said her mother had granted her permission to visit. I warned her about my cockroach-infested living conditions, but she didn’t care. Lucy arrived on New Year’s Eve 1980. We celebrated by screaming as the ball dropped in Times Square and decided to live together. The problem? Lucy wanted to tell her domineering Southern mother in person. What could go wrong?
Facing Billie Jean
In Birmingham, Billie Jean made a dramatic entrance, her wig askew—she knew something was up. When Lucy told her we planned to live together, Billie shouted, “No, you’re not!” and slapped Lucy. After Lucy declared, “I’m not a child; I can make my own decisions,” Billie barked, “Itchy, get the gun.” Itchy refused, so Billie stomped into the bedroom. When we heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being loaded, Itchy calmly said, “If I was you, I’d run.” We ran.
That night, we made it to the University of Montevallo, where Lucy lived in a women-only dorm guarded by housemothers intent on preserving co-ed virtue. At midnight, I climbed the dorm’s fire escape slide—a slippery, awkward ascent to the third floor. Lucy unlocked a window and let me in. Before dawn, I shimmied back down as Lucy packed her few belongings. That was the night we officially began our life together.
Starting From Nothing
Looking back, I don’t know what we were thinking. We had no money, no family support, no health insurance, and no food—just each other. Lucy and I had dated for years, but mainly over the phone. By my calculation, before moving in together, we’d spent less than four weeks in each other’s physical presence. Our early years were filled with menial jobs, thin paper plates, and using toilet paper as napkins. We were robbed, bullied on the subway, and often went hungry. One birthday, Lucy’s mother sent her a gift: an oversized tin of popcorn. Thinking there might be a hidden treasure inside, we sifted through it—only to find kernels. Happy Birthday.
A Ferris Wheel Wedding
Summers were spent earning $75 a week acting in an outdoor drama about Lincoln at New Salem State Park. I played Abe; Lucy played Mary Todd. Broke and tired of transient living, we went to a courthouse, waited in line with handcuffed criminals, and told a judge we wanted to get married. He obliged. Afterward, we spent our last $20 at the Illinois State Fair, riding the Ferris wheel—a fitting metaphor for the ups and downs ahead.
The Urbana Years
We moved into a tiny, ragged mobile home near a highway in Urbana, Illinois. I worked as a waiter, and Lucy was a receptionist and bartender. Life was hard. I applied to Rutgers for an MFA in playwriting and was accepted, but we couldn’t find a place to rent that allowed dogs. I dropped out before classes started, and we limped back to Urbana. Determined to defy my father’s lifelong “dogs are a problem” mantra, I adopted Val, a jet-black mutt with a Bob Hope nose. Over the years, there would be LaRee, Cootie, and now Ollie, a teacup Chihuahua. Their unconditional love has often outshone that of any human in my life except Lucy.
A Breakthrough with Kabuki Medea
While waiting tables, I met Shozo Sato, a Japanese Zen master. When he learned I had studied playwriting, he asked me to write a Kabuki version of Medea. Lucy and I jumped into the project. The play debuted at the University of Illinois and later opened professionally in Chicago. It eventually reached the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., earning royalties and a taste of validation. Still, we were stuck in mind-numbing day jobs.
The Treadmill Years
Lucy kept steady work while I jumped from one job to the next. I was fired by Peggy Lee for being a terrible spotlight operator and quit another job mid-interview because the manager was insufferable. My evaluations were equally unflattering, with one describing me as someone who preferred “uncomplicated schedules.” The one job I excelled at? Delivering newspapers. Alone in the quiet early hours, I found solace. My “Super Lark” brain kicks starts at 3 AM. I never need an alarm. These mornings became fertile ground for writing.
A New Chapter at UCLA
In 1984, I was accepted into UCLA’s MFA screenwriting program. This time, luck was on our side. We found a charming 1930s bungalow near campus with blooming flowers, a private patio, and no cockroaches. While in school, I worked as a script secretary on Moonlighting, the hit show starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. At the closing night party at the Coconut Grove, I snuck into the abandoned Ambassador Hotel and stood on the spot where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I also worked for Jason Miller, the playwright of That Championship Season, and Father Karras in The Exorcist. He was usually drunk by 10 AM, so I joined him.
A Breath of Fresh Air in Smoggy L.A.
The polluted skies of Los Angeles felt like a breath of fresh air as I bloomed. I found an agent, optioned a movie, and sold a sitcom script to My Two Dads. Overnight, I became a staff writer. You’d think this was a happy ending—a learning-disabled kid lands an ultra-high-paying job writing comedy. But Hollywood had other plans.
The show’s producers—a famous screamer and a celebrated prick—ran a hostile workplace. Writers worked 14-hour days, six days a week, and even bathroom breaks were fraught. Once, a writer whispered to me at the urinal, “Oh my God, I’m peeing blood.” I urged him to see a doctor. His response? “I can’t. If I leave, they might realize they don’t need me.” On one grueling tape night, I reached my breaking point. Exhausted, I tried sneaking from the sound stage to the writer’s building for a nap, only to find it locked. Frustrated, I kicked the door, shattering the glass and setting off alarms. I was 34 years old, a Hollywood writer, and hiding from guards under a truck like a fugitive.
Hollywood Glimmers Fade
Despite the chaos, there were perks: Lucy completed her bachelor’s at Cal State Northridge, I earned my second MFA, and I sold more sitcom scripts and a movie to Ron Howard’s Imagine Films. Working on sitcoms was a grind. Being an early-morning person, I was never cut out for late-night comedy writing sessions. Sometimes, I'd fall asleep, which would piss off the producers. Soon, the industry’s soul-crushing grind and lack of nap time wore me down. One night, I watched an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air I’d written, only to see my jokes rewritten into drivel. When a friend called, praising the episode, I hung up, turned to Lucy, and said, “I’m out of here.” Hollywood had lost its luster.
From L.A. to the Rockies
So we left our beloved Westwood bungalow for Denver, where Lucy began her MFA in voice and dialects. I took an adjunct teaching position at the University of Colorado’s downtown campus. My informal teaching style—a mix of stand-up comedy and marginal educational value—resonated with students.
One day, while at the public library, the intercom buzzed: “Bill Streib, please come to the front desk.” The librarian mispronounced my last name as “Streeb,” which wasn’t unusual. But when I approached, another man claimed to be Bill Streib—only he pronounced it “Streib” and looked like an older version of me. He sneered, “You’re from the ‘Streyeb’ side of the family.” He explained our shared Jewish ancestry: two brothers from Germany, one of whom anglicized the family name and abandoned Judaism. That’s how I discovered my Jewish roots—and why my father often muttered, “Don’t act like a Jew.”
An Academic Detour in Charlotte
Lucy interned at Playmakers Repertory Theatre in North Carolina, and I landed a tenure-track position at UNC-Charlotte. But when I arrived, the kind chair who hired me had retired. His replacement was an “evil termite.” She showed me a windowless office crammed with storage boxes, announcing it was mine. Across the hall was a sunny office overlooking a courtyard. When I suggested swapping the boxes for the sunny office, she snapped, “That’s for senior faculty.” Our relationship soured further when she asked about committee preferences, and I quipped, “I would like to be on the welcoming committee.” My flypaper personality seemed to attract assholes and absurdity. After nine months of her petty tyranny, I got a call about two professorships at the University of Wyoming. One for Lucy, one for me.
Leaving Charlotte
My exit from UNC-Charlotte was as petty as the rest of my academic life there. The semester ended, and I was in my windowless office, finishing my grading. The next day, Lucy and I were set to leave for Wyoming. When I asked the department secretary about returning my office key, she informed me that she couldn't help me and that I would have to stay around until the “key office” opened in a week. It was only open on Thursdays from 2 to 4.
It was now 3:45 on a Thursday. I briefly considered hanging around for a week just to return the key but then came a moment of enlightenment—a Buddha-like clarity: Fuck it. By 3:52, I’d packed my office, turned in the key, and driven away, leaving the ungraded papers behind. Packing was easy for me, as I had never fully moved in. During all my time in academia, I kept my office sparse, prepared to be fired at any moment.
A New Chapter in Wyoming
At first glance, the University of Wyoming seemed like the last stop on the failure train. But it wasn’t so bad. The president was approachable, the dean laughed easily, and the key office had reasonable hours. Lucy and I both quickly earned tenure, full professorships, and teaching awards. My lecture halls swelled with over 800 students a year. For a while, it felt like a golden age. Not everything was perfect. Lucy and I endured petty grievances, like a colleague measuring her office and complaining her's was ten inches wider than his. Theater professors seemed uniquely obsessed with square footage and résumé inflation.
Caring for My Father
One day, my mother called and asked if she and my father could retire near us. For her sake—or perhaps out of masochism—I said yes. A year later, she passed away suddenly, leaving me to care for my father alone. In response to this new chapter, I decided to change my name. Lucy’s great-grandmother, Sandal Missouri Downs, had a grave in Alabama. I visited, knelt, and asked for permission. With no divine objections—or attacking squirrels—I assumed it was okay. Thus, William Missouri Downs was born.
The Blowfish Years
The pleasant department head was replaced by “Blowfish,” a petty bureaucrat who saw me as a threat. He sidelined me with low-level classes for non-majors. Instead of confronting him, I quietly moved my office to the philosophy/religion department. With so much free time, I wrote a play every year, winning contests and securing productions. I published over a dozen plays and co-authored textbooks with Lucy, earning royalties and residuals that allowed us to travel the world.
Adventures Abroad
We spent a month in China, breathing air the color of pink candy, and half a year in London without sunshine. In India, I climbed a dusty mountain to ask a naked Sadhu wearing a Timex about the meaning of life. He had no answer. In Krakow, I asked the same question in a confessional; the priest was equally stumped. In Egypt, I was held at gunpoint after breaking into an anthropological dig at the Library of Alexandria. Soon, I have visited more than 35 countries. I had come too far to let a fence stop me.
Becoming a Beach Bum
We bought a beach house in Gulf Shores, Alabama—“The Redneck Riviera.” Summers were spent running the air conditioning nonstop and boiling shrimp in Coors. But the ignorance gripping society became painfully clear. Ashamed of my country, I considered renouncing my citizenship. Instead, I quietly adopted a Canadian identity abroad. When the national anthem played, I would leave—no protests, just quiet disconnection. I became a wandering Jew, a resident alien searching for meaning.
The Speed of Life
The unfortunate side effect of a life in academia is how quickly time passes. One day, Lucy and I blinked, and we were in our fifties. We hadn’t consciously decided to stay in Wyoming; we simply forgot to leave. Nor did we choose not to have children—it just never happened. Suddenly, we were full professors, watching the decades slip by as if on fast-forward. Through it all, I lived for the quiet early mornings when the world was still asleep and creativity flourished. There was nothing better than crafting a funny line at 3:30 a.m. and laughing out loud at my absurdity.
A Life in Plays
I wrote plays about the world’s chaos and my own broken history: The Exit Interview poked fun at school shootings. Fascism: The Musical satirized corporate overreach. How to Steal a Picasso explored dominant fathers and artistic sons. Kosher Lutherans gave me the Jewish family I always wished I’d had. Women Playing Hamlet examines the struggle against self-doubt. These plays found audiences around the world. I heard laughter in Spain and Korea and took a bow in Vienna, where the producers insisted I join the curtain call. For a boy who once struggled to spell, it was surreal.
Despite my success, I never shared it with my father. I let him believe I was a starving artist, barely scraping by. I didn’t tell him about the beach house, the bow in Vienna, or the royalties and residuals that made us wealthy. Some victories are better savored in silence.
Ice Station Redneck
Over time, the golden age of Wyoming faded. The laughing dean retired, replaced by humorless administrators. “Prepare for complete living,” carved above the Arts and Sciences doors, became a relic of the past, and the humanities were declared nonessential. I pried my name off the office door, leaving only a gluey shadow, and quietly removed myself from the department website. I became the best thing one can be at a modern university - invisible.
Seeking Solitude
Lucy and I bought a log cabin high in the Colorado mountains, where we mingled with deer and marveled at the Milky Way. But the world kept intruding: global warming and oil spills drove us from our beach house, and forest fires smoked us out of the mountains. All I wanted was good food, restful sleep, intelligent conversation, and solitude. I’m still searching.
The Pandemic
The pandemic brought theaters to a halt and turned my once-packed lectures into inept Zoom sessions. After twenty-nine years in academia, we had few friends and little patience for our bitter colleagues or the Trump-loving politicians who ruled the state. We decided it was time for another new life and walked. My academic office, empty as always, took only fifteen minutes to empty. I walked away and never looked back.
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Lessons Learned
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The father, family, and faculty who stood in my way are gone now, leaving me with the space and freedom to focus on what I love most—travel and writing. These days, I spend my time crafting books and novels rather than plays. After over 350 productions, I feel I’ve said what I needed to say on stage.
Lately, I’ve been drawn to philosophy, finding inspiration in the works of Isaiah Berlin, Michael Foley, Viktor Frankl, and Voltaire. I’m also captivated by the life of Buster Keaton—my hero, whose resilience and humor continue to amaze me. I believe there are still a few more stories left in me, though the way the world is going, who knows?
You might expect me to share some profound wisdom here, but you’ll find that in my plays. For me, life has been about running away from my chaotic childhood and longing for the big, loving Jewish family I never had. As Lucy wisely puts it, “You must work to create a life, not a legacy.”
