Author: Robin Lamont
Published By: Grayling Press (Sept. 14, 2012)
Synopsis:
Pryor Wright’s ultra-conservative radio show has millions of devout fans who are sure that the slurs and wild accusations fired at the liberal left prove him a true patriot. But when his venomous rantings catch Maren Garrity’s twin brother in the crossfire, the struggling actress pursues her own style of justice and enlists a troupe of fellow unemployed actors to teach Wright just how powerful words can be.
Bio of Robin Lamont
Born
in Boston and raised in Brooklyn, Robin aspired from an early age to
be an actress. As a sophomore in Carnegie-Mellon’s specialized
drama program she was cast in a school production of a musical based
on the Gospel According to St. Matthew called Godspell. Robin
stayed with the production as it began its long and successful run,
moving with the show from off-Broadway to Broadway and finally to the
movie screen. Her original cast recording of “Day by Day” and
her film version of the song have drawn fans from around the world.
She went on to star as Sandy in the Broadway musical Grease
and later appeared again on Broadway in Working, in which she
sang James Taylor’s heart wrenching song Millwork.
As her
“day” job, she signed on with a private investigations firm in
Manhattan that hired actors to work undercover to ferret out major
producers of counterfeit products. After several years, she became
the company’s Director of Operations, running nationwide
anti-counterfeiting programs for a number of intellectual property
law firms. During that time, she attended Pace Law School and
graduated cum laude while also winning the New York Trial Attorneys
Award. She practiced as an Assistant District Attorney in
Westchester County for eight years, spending much of her legal career
in the county’s criminal courts and with the Special Litigations
Unit. She lives in Westchester County, New York with her family.
Guest Post:
Staying in Character
By Robin Lamont
Before I became a novelist I had a
bunch of different careers. One of them was as an actress, another
as an undercover private investigator. In retrospect, however, I can
see they’re not so different after all – they both require the
ability to stay “in character.”
For theater roles, one must stay in
character for about two to three hours, the length of a play or
musical. I was in the original production of Godspell, and
there, all the actors were actually on stage for the entire length of
the show. That’s unusual for an actor and requires sustained
energy and concentration. In the Broadway production of Grease,
in which I played the ingénue Sandy, I came and left the stage
periodically, as did the other actors. But I found, more often than
not, all of the actors remained pretty much “in character”
backstage as well as front and center, since it was easier than
having to turn their character on and off. Thus, every night, even
waiting in the wings, “Sandy” might still have to ward off the
leers and lewd comments of the greasers.
Going undercover requires a different
kind of commitment to staying “in the role.” I’ve known
investigators who have had to adopt a role for months at a time, and
don’t know how they do it. My situations were far easier – try
to make a buy from a counterfeiter – get in and out fast.
Nevertheless, allowing the façade to drop even for a moment on the
real world stage is potentially dangerous, and this knowledge weighs
much more heavily on the undercover.
In my new book Wright for America,
a young woman named Maren Garrity is fully aware of the differences
since she is a struggling actress and works as an undercover
investigator in her “day job.” Things get complicated when she
takes on perhaps one too many undercover roles in her quest to teach
a venomous radio host a lesson. Balancing all those personas makes
for some sticky moments in which she has to switch back and forth
from one character to another. She also has to confront her own envy
of qualities she sees in her undercover personas that she feels she
lacks in real life: one is sexy and savvy, the other is bolder than
she’ll ever be.
But in the end, you cannot be effective
in a role unless some part of you owns it. For Maren this is an
elusive lesson.
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