How It All Began...

Bronwyn Rucker was scheduled to perform at a festival I was producing sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association at the Inroads Multimedia Art Center in March 1983.  She was recommended to me to perform at the event and though I knew nothing about her, I agreed to her participation.  Later in February I read the piece about her show in the New York Post and was genuinely intrigued, I couldn’t wait to see what she would do at the festival.  When we finally met in March, the first thing I did was enthusiastically say, "I read your review," but I could tell that she was put off by my comment.  She told me much later that she confided in a friend about what I had said when we met, and her friend said, "he's just being confrontational."  

On the second day of the weekend festival, the day she was to perform, I saw Bronwyn reading reviews of my concerts that were on display at Inroads.  One review, from a 1980 concert at Rider College, stated that my music was “aesthetically appalling, horrendous and hideous,” and another reviewer writing about a 1982 performance at the Henry Hicks Gallery said that the headache she had upon entering “would probably have been on its way to a full-blown migraine had the sound gone on for more than five minutes."  Bronwyn already knew the time-slot for her performance, and the only interaction we had before the performance was when I went backstage to tell her that someone was here to see her (it was Danitra Vance, future SNL cast member, who co-founded Women In Comedy with Bronwyn -- Danitra sadly passed away in 1994 at the age of 40).  

Bronwyn did her performance -- the audience and I loved it!  It was from Subway Named Desire, her original one-woman show, and I thought it was brilliant -- her performance and her material, it was unlike anything I had seen before, and I told her how much I enjoyed it.  After performing, Bronwyn sat behind me and we decided to go for drinks -- I put someone else in charge and we left.  At the Soho restaurant, Bronwyn said, "I read your reviews" -- we both enjoyed great laughter!  

That’s how it all began!...