James Braly, a former corporate speechwriter, plays the rat race for laughs in his one-man show. (By Andrew Schwartz)
James Braly made a good living not too long ago. A really good living.
Rooftop, views-of-Central-Park kind of living.
"You're 'Sir,' all the time," Braly recalls of those days, two decades spent raking in buckets of cash as a corporate speechwriter.
Then he sold his apartment, moved his wife and two sons upstate and spent the next few years living by himself in a basement storage unit -- you know, to work on his craft as a storyteller.
Funny part is, it worked. Braly's one-man autobiographical show, "Life in a Marital Institution," received enthusiastic reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer, and in a month it starts an off-Broadway run.
Braly, 46, will swing through Washington Tuesday for a performance of his show sponsored by SpeakeasyDC, a club whose monthly storytelling events have proved incredibly popular in the past year.
If the name of Braly's show leaves any questions about its content, try the subtitle: "20 years of monogamy in one terrifying hour."
At its heart are questions about manhood and success and fallibility and fatherhood -- particularly in the context of a high-pressured city and society where, Braly says, "you are what you earn."
The tales evolved through performances with the Moth, New York's premier storytelling organization. By 2005 Braly was sleeping in that storage unit, eating takeout three times a day, showering twice a week at the gym -- all a couple of hours away from his family -- a situation that continues today.
"The genesis behind telling those stories was to try to figure out what was happening," he says. "The stories were a way, for me, of trying to understand why I'd made those choices."
And then, naturally, play them for laughs.
It is, after all, the era of the revealing -- sometimes excruciating -- personal memoir. So don't cry for Braly, even if it might seem he's confessing too much to a room full of strangers.
"It's comforting. It's basically a conversation between me and the audience, except that I get to do all the talking," Braly says flatly.
Everybody wants to be understood. This is Braly's way. And hopefully, he adds, audiences "see the humor in it -- in the damage."
For a taste of James Braly's style, check out http://www.washingtonpost.com/weekend.
Life in a Marital Institution Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I St. NW 202-331-7282 or 240-888-9751 Tuesday at 7:30. $15.