I recently wrote my fourth solo play, a comedy about how no one should ever have children, and how, after my wife and I had a child, I learned that I was right! Anyway, “The New One” is going to Broadway and the biggest question I’m asked since I announced the run is “How did that happen?”

I’m not sure. But if I take a step back and try to answer the question, I’d say, “There was no single step.” It was a series of steps over years. And, even then on top of that, it’s luck. It’s your 10,000 hours of preparation meeting 12 other people’s 10,000 hours of preparation meeting $3 million laundered through the Cayman Islands … meeting luck.



[Read Mike Birbiglia’s six steps to making it small in Hollywood. Or anywhere.]

So what are those steps? For me, it began with my first solo play, “Sleepwalk With Me,” 15 years ago. If you want to try writing a solo play, I’d suggest that you:

1. WRITE IN A JOURNAL. Document your life. The good stuff. The bad stuff. But mostly the bad stuff. What’s wrong with you is more interesting than what’s right. I’ve always felt like we go to solo theater to be told secrets. When I was developing “The New One” I was writing in my journal all of these secret feelings I had about being a new dad. Feeling like everything I did was a mistake. One day I wrote, “My wife and daughter love each other so much … and I’m there too.” In the margin I wrote, “This could be something!”

I shared it with my wife, Jen, who’s a poet, and she encouraged me to say it onstage. That line ended up forming the foundation of the whole play.