Burt Sukhov - Actor - San Jose, CA

BURT SUKHOV - RESUMÉ AND LIST OF WRITINGS

The Atrium 1009 Blossom River Way, Apt. 241 San Jose, CA 95123
Phone/Fax: (408) 269-8420 Cell: (408) 425-1474
E-mail: rocinantebs@sbcglobal.net

My Background as a Working Actor

Since July of 1986, I have been working on radio and television commercials, voice-overs and industrial training films, averaging about three to four a year.

My background includes seven years in a private workshop with Paul E. Richards, of the Actors Studio in New York and formerly of the Stanford Repertory Theater. I have worked with other people of similar backgrounds in the past, such as Wendell Phillips of the Group Theater (in the mid-1940s), and Mark Gordon of the Second City. I consider that this private work, which included improvisation, has left me with a skill derived from facing the kind of creative challenges which do not occur too often in the world of the professional Theater.

My past credits also cover a good number of parts in Community Theater productions, including one with Theaterworks (Malvolio, Twelfth Night, 1977), with the Sunnyvale Community Theater (Lazar Wolf, Fiddler on the Roof, 1976), a comic singing part with the San Jose Gilbert and Sullivan Society in their 1979 production of Utopia Limited; the part of Neighbor Charley in the 1985 production of Death of a Salesman at San Jose City College; and the part of Kolenkhov (the Russian ballet teacher) in that same College's production of You Can't Take It With You, in 1986.

I have done a major part in several radio broadcast recordings made in local private recording studios. I have been working with Bill Evenson and Rich Collins on these projects, under the name of the New Mercury Theater.

I have a range of versatility that enables me to play a good span of character and dialect parts.

I am also available for copy editing and proofreading assignments.

Special Talents

Good singing voice: sang good supporting roles in two musicals (see above); sing American and ethnic folk songs with my own guitar accompaniment; rudimentary knowledge of fencing; Dialects: British, French, German, Italian, Scots, Irish, Cockney, Russian, Yiddish; some knowledge of German, Spanish, French, Yiddish, Italian.

During a career of some 53 years as a practicing retail pharmacist, I was kept from doing much Theater by a work schedule that required evening hours during a large part of each week. On my arrival in California (from New York) in 1964, I found I was able to fill in on the Olio (vaudeville) after-show program of a local Old Time Melodrama theater. I still maintain a solo repertoire of about an hour, consisting of selections from my Olio pieces, such as Casey at the Bat, Gunga Din, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Cremation of Sam McGee, and other pieces. Soon after that - especially after my retirement from Pharmacy - I found my schedule opening up to permit community theater engagements such as described above.

I had been writing articles for several Pharmacy newsletters since about 1983. My acting training went strongly into improvisation, and this led me to the realization that I wanted to write fiction. In about 1985 I took a course in Science Fiction taught by Ray Faraday Nelson at the now closed Writers Connection, and it was during this course that I was first and finally able to make the change over to fiction. Since then I have written about six play scripts (one of which I have formatted into a full length film script, (The Just in Blood), one novella and a short story. Some ten years or more ago a play of mine, A Soul for Ben, was produced as a staged reading by the Arrowhead Readers Theater (now defunct) in the building that is now occupied by the City Lights Theater, soon to be rewritten as a film script. I am grateful to my nephew, Steve Lester and his wife, Meera, for having been able to work on their staff on the Writers Connection, where I was able to learn computer skills - without which I might not have had the patience to do much writing.

I look upon it as a happy combination of circumstances that has brought me, Bill Evenson and Jerry Anderson together. I had written the Audrey script as a short play about 25 years ago in the Paul Richards class, and had done it as a radio script in Rich Collins' home studio, with Bill Evenson directing, only about a year or so ago. This script is being rewritten as a short independent film, which will be in production in mid-July of 2001. I don't have the kind of knack for film script writing and/or directing that Bill and Jerry have, and I have been able to look in on the pre-production work on it with great satisfaction, and a feeling that this project is in the best of hands, with Bill Evenson directing and Jerry Anderson acting as producer and cinematographer. See http://www.anderwell.com/audrey/.

LIST OF WRITINGS

NON-FICTION

• Wrote articles for the Newsletter of the California Employee Pharmacist Association; in February of 1989, was awarded an honorary plaque "In Appreciation Of Your Devoted and Valued Service to The CEPA Newsletter and To The Profession of Pharmacy."
  
  
• From about 1985 to 1999, wrote articles for the Newsletter of the Pharmacists Planning Service, Inc.

FICTION

• A Soul for Ben - an autobiographical play, produced as a staged reading by the Arrowhead Readers Theater in San Jose, about 1991. I recently reformatted this script as a film.
  
  
• A Kind of Arrangement - a play about a young woman with aspirations toward the Theater; she thinks seriously about becoming the kept consort of a Theater impresario, in spite of opposition from her brother, a young man who is in love with her, and the young man's grandfather.
  
  
• The Shadow of a Memory: My Dream of Elena - an older man revisits his past relationship with a beautiful woman, and his regrets for missed chances.
  
  
• A Dream of Flying - a short story about a teenage boy who manages to rescue his dream of flying after sustaining the destruction, before its completion, of a much loved airplane model.
  
  
• The Just in Blood - a film script; the story of a young man, beginning in late 19th century Belarus, who allows himself to be seduced into the vampire state, in order to have the power to follow his obsession with fighting injustice; this leaves him in the unique position of being a vampire who wants to give blood, and follow the life of a member of the Lamed Vov, one of only 36 truly just men on the face of the earth. He finally seeks transformation into the normal human state, through an exorcism performed by a Tsaddik, himself a Lamed Vov, after having lived through decades of persecution and surviving the Shoah (Holocaust).
  
  
• The Right Girl for Morty - a novella about a young computer genius. He finds a fashion mannequin who gains real human form through an orthodox Jewish exorcism, and emerges in the person of a young girl, now grown, who has nurtured a love for this young man since their childhood. They find love together, but are unprepared for the strange quirk of fate that comes between them.
  
  
• Maimonides Laughed - a play based upon a true anecdote, which follows a hard-working pharmacist into a truthful and realistic story that carries him toward a fate that is all too reminiscent of that of Willy Loman. Though a tragedy, this play is a warning of the dangers involved when powerful corporate interests dominate a state board of pharmacy, as they have in California.
  
  
• The Story of Tweak - a children's story about two cats who become friends in the same household, even though Tweak is the lucky survivor of abandonment on a California freeway.
  
  
• A Rendezvous With Audrey - a one-act radio play about an older man's imaginary reunion with a girl he had wanted to date as a teenager but was too shy to try.
  
  [This play has been rewritten as the script for a short independent film for which the shooting has been completed in late 2001, and is awaiting an opportunity for submission in independent film festivals. See http://www.anderwell.com/audrey/.]
  
  
• Hymn to Big Business - a short poem indicting mindless corporate disregard for individual and public welfare.
  
  

Copyright © 2002-2007 by Burt Sukhov. All rights reserved.
This Web site is http://www.firepathdigital.com/burtsukhov/.