MICHAEL IANNUCCIHome

Stories & reflections

On theatre, friendship, family, pride, and the moments that stay with us.

Apr 6, 2025 · 3 min read

THE GREAT LINDA BALGORD

Linda Balgord popped into mind. She does regularly. But tonight the thought of her lingered. This picture of us in TITANIC popped up on my Aura Frames and I happened to catch it. I was lucky to share some time with her when we played opposite each other as Ida and Isador Straus at the Fulton Theatre and Maine State Music Theatre. I had worked with her before in Houston in a production of CATS. She was a golden throated Grizabella. Our paths, in that show, hardly crossed. But I was on stage with her when she sang Memory. In awe was I. And watching her and the glorious Ken Page ride up to cat heaven at the end of that show was magic. So I was a bit intimidated when I knew I was going to play opposite her in TITANIC. She played all the diva roles in history making productions. Mamma Rose…Norma Desmond…Grizabella…Fosca…Queen Elizabeth I. So I was apprehensive when we started our journey together in TITANIC. She had every right to be a diva. I was almost kind of expecting it. Not even Sherlock Holmes could uncover a diva in the behavior of Ms. Balgord.

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Aug 1, 2024 · 3 min read

VIVE LA CELINE!!!!

I’m an opening ceremonies fan. My connection to the Olympics goes back to the 80’s. I worked in the offices of Bud Greenspan, the great sports film documentarian.

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Nov 10, 2020 · 5 min read

NOVEMBER 7, 2020

What a day that was!!!! Jubilant. Especially after the somberness when the first results were reported on November 3rd. My husband and I went to bed with heavy hearts. We woke up on Wednesday and had our usual morning philosophical talk, which for the past four years has been about politics and the insane state our country is in right now. We started making plans. Maybe a move to Canada. Maybe giving up our little getaway in Milford, PA. How about Sicily? My husband has family there. After being trapped in a mile long Trump/Pence motorcade on our one lane into Milford a couple of days before we started thinking, “Is this really where we want to be? Two liberal married gay men?”

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Aug 28, 2020 · 5 min read

A GREAT UNCLE’S DESIRE

I am not a parent but I have some terrific kids in my life. Thank God for Zoom and Face Time so I can continue to watch them grow and develop and remind them what a loving and yet annoying great uncle I can be (hey, that’s what great uncles are for.) And for Amazon so I can spoil them a little (hey, that’s what great uncles for for).

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Apr 18, 2020 · 4 min read

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It’s a new world kids. Yep, it is. Not just a new world because of what we’ve lost. It’s a new world because of what we need to gain. What we need to become.

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Oct 7, 2019 · 3 min read

A SIMPLE GAME OF BOCCE

When I was a kid growing up in South Philadelphia I used to watch the old Italian guys play bocce on a make shift court on the sidewalk. A rectangle made out of wood...some dirt...and viola’...bocce. I didn’t understand the game then...still don’t. But those guys would be out there...speaking Italian, maybe a glass of homemade wine (yep...me, my grandfather and a grape press in the cellar...I was the Robert Mondavi of South Philadelphia) and just enjoying community.

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May 18, 2019 · 5 min read

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOYS (AKA THE MEN) OF TREASURE ISLAND

A phone call from gentle genius Marc Robin, the artistic director at the Fulton Theatre, asking me to participate in a workshop presentation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND that he and his husband Curt Dale Clark (please bottle your creative energy and market it Mr. Clark) adapted into a musical, began one of the happier theatre experiences I have ever had as an actor.

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Apr 28, 2019 · 4 min read

MY ACCIDENTAL VISIT TO AN AA MEETING

A couple of years ago I was doing a play in Connecticut. The theatre put me up in a lovely old house that was next to a beautiful building that used to be a church but now operated as the town meeting hall. There was something always going on there. When there was an event at the hall the overflow parking came over to our cast house parking area.

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Apr 23, 2019 · 8 min read

OUR WEDDING

I asked Frank to marry me about 5 years ago. It’s been so long I don’t remember exactly. On the anniversary of our meeting at Fishs Eddy (a dish boutique on 19th & Broadway…but that’s another story) we went to a lovely restaurant (now defunct) called Telepan on the upper west side. I made my own anniversary card for him and in it popped the question. He accepted. Time went by and we didn’t seem to be moving forward with any sort of marital commitment. Sometimes Frank even joked about it. To me, coming from a broken home, and having been through so many break-ups myself, I didn’t appreciate jokes about something so sacred. So I took marriage off the table.

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