Friday Explorations Read-Aloud: “On the Boardwalk: A Memoir” by Martin Sherman

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For June 26, Coté will read aloud from On the Boardwalk: A Memoir by Martin Sherman.

A memoir from the writer of the 1979 Broadway success BENT with a foreword by Sir Ian McKellen

Sherman takes us on a journey through America in the mid twentieth century, starting in New Jersey – where he was born in the 1930s to a Jewish immigrant family – ending on Broadway with the premier of his seminal play Bent starring Richard Gere.

On route, we encounter other famous performers including Meryl Streep, Bee Gees, Joan Baez, but the scene-stealing character is always his father – a charismatic narcissist.

We stop off in Woodstock, Los Angeles and London – a city Martin would eventually make home; he relays his story with self-deprecating humor as he struggles to make it in theatre, with his sexuality, and under the shadow of the inheritable disease that killed his mother tragically early – a disease from which he finds himself finally free, as he turns forty in the book’s closing pages.

Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.

Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at friday-explorations@usa.net