Things I Wish I Knew
Before I Started Talking
Written & Performed by Michael Smerconish
Philadelphia Theatre Company, Bucks County Playhouse & CNN
Stage Direction & Dramaturgy by Bill Fennelly
TV Direction by Chris Strand
Starring Michael Smerconish
A Note from BillMichael Smerconish is an extraordinary communicator. For decades, on radio and television, he has interviewed politicians, journalists, and world leaders, and engaged thousands of people in conversations about the issues that divide and unite us.
As Stage Director and Dramaturg, I helped transform Michael’s life and career into a theatrical journey through three decades of American political and media history: Reagan, Bush, Obama, Philadelphia politics, talk radio, the rise of cable news. But the heart of the piece is personal: a man looking backward in order to look ahead.
The questions that framed the story:
What did I believe when I started?
What have I learned?
What have I changed my mind about?
And, perhaps most importantly, who have I become?
The project began as a live national tour celebrating Michael’s thirty years in talk radio. We were days away from opening to sold-out houses at Philadelphia Theatre Company’s Suzanne Roberts Theatre when COVID-19 brought live performance to a halt. Suddenly, the very thing the show celebrated, the communal experience of gathering in a theatre, was impossible.
We had to find another way, and Michael did. On May 19, 2020, he performed the piece on the stage of the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope: an empty theatre, a country in lockdown, a small, socially distanced crew. It was one of the strangest theatrical experiences of my career.
Chris Strand directed the television production, preserving the immediacy of the stage performance while bringing it to a national audience through CNN and, later, as a film. Without an audience in the room, the piece became something I hadn’t expected: not a performance for a crowd, but a man telling his truth to a camera and, through it, to the entire country.
