Memories of My “Celebrity Afterlife”

Confession: I’ve always been in love with Natalie Wood, even before puberty. People ask if I have a type and I always say I don’t — but if I had one, it would be a Natalie Wood type. Perhaps, this is the reason why after her ridiculously tragic death that I was inspired to write a one-act play “In Hell Without A Cause” with Natalie as one of the main characters.

I’m revealing all this now because of the forthcoming documentary “Natalie Wood: What’s Left Behind” produced by her daughter that’s airing on HBO, May 5. I can’t wait to see it.

In addition to the opportunity to fall in love again with that gorgeous, petite, and doe-eyed starlet, I see this also as a great chance to reminisce about a few of my “glory days” in the Theatre. (I didn’t have a lot of them.)

So I’m going back 36 years when I staged “In Hell Without A Cause” with another one-act I wrote called “Stooge Heaven” with the 3 Stooges as characters. I produced both plays with an entire budget of $200, under the umbrella title of “Celebrity Afterlife” at was then called the Marquis Public Theatre in San Diego. (It’s still on India Street but now home to an improv troupe and called the National Comedy Theatre.)

I was not on the theatre’s main stage but rather I rented out the 50-seat second stage called The Gallery. The show ran for three weekends and by most standards, it was a success. Not a wild, career-making success — but a modest one.

We had mostly full houses, I more than covered my expenses, and the production received some critical acclaim. The reviews weren’t exactly raves but I was proud of them. The degree of difficulty was really high giving the limited funds, the amateur actors, and directing it myself, with no support from the theatre company beyond manning the box office.

Hey, kid, ya got chutzpah and one beauty of a premise!

Christopher Schneider, the La Jolla Light theatre critic in 1984, wrote:

“Writer/director Richard Medugno has…written about celebrities — dead ones, on the whole — for the current Gallery show at the Marquis: ‘Celebrity Afterlife.’ The two one-acts which are included under this title suffer from non-existent production values, an uncertain wit, and…