She So Funny

Dear Reader,
As you know, I was gentrified out of my Bed-Stuy apartment with the threat of rent doubled, the first year.

Months of looking for "affordable" housing with oddly specific financial issues (which included an 800 + credit score & NO DEBT) left me a drained emotional wreck. 

After nine months of fruitless searching, I found myself in an unknown neighborhood. Blinded by hopelessness & fatigue, I said yes to the 1st one bedroom I saw not requiring a co-signer.

I finally had a place to live. I announced on Face Book with great fanfare, "My new location is Sound View in the Bronx!" A reply of "Are you crazy?!", slingshot me back to depression. My respnose? I pressed unfriend on her page. 

Yes I was crazy & tired. That's why I bought (??!!) a 
co-op in a grimy, (unbeknownst to me) infamous crime neighborhood, where I didn't speak the language.

It's a year since I've moved to the Bronx. 
My 2 room leak was fixed. 
I do constant behavioral therapy... Like, when asked how I like where I live? "It's fine." I lie & try to smile.

Yesterday a neighbor causally mentioned that when she'd seen someone thrown off the fire escape, she moved to a rear facing apartment.

How do I like where I live?
It's fine. 

Rhonda Hansome is a writer, comic & director. She directs Ugly Is A Hard Pill, July 16 @ 9 PM, July 18 @ 1 PM & July 19 @ 6 PM Hudson Guild Theatre 441 W. 26th St. NYC (9th & 10th Ave) Keef & Lena are both bi-sexual. Their love lives are scandalous!

Click for tickets.

                          I wrote a whole bunch of shit but decided Katt says part of it very well.

Some people know me as a poet whose poetry is often funny.  Some know me as a comic who is more sensitive than insensitive.  Some have heard my prose and never imagined I did the other things.  For years, in my neighborhood, I was known as "Charlie's mother."  Then there are folks who know me as an actress and only that way.

In actuality these years, most of my waking time is spent being a teacher for adults who need to complete their basic education.  It's a special group.  Many things in life can and do throw a person off track.  Students come with all sorts of life challenges.  So do teachers, for that matter.

The day after I sprained my ankle, a student in one of the programs where I work (though not a student of mine) suffered a fatal tragedy.  This was compounded some days later by a vicious verbal attack on the person no longer here, and it was done on social media by a person who only knew the deceased person through our program, which he named.  He implied we'd agree with his view of things.  It was awful.

I am fortunate to be able to work for programs where I can usually close the door and create a cocoon of sorts where different degrees of healing and learning takes place.  For the most part, it is a mutually positive experience.  This morning was our end-of-year celebration.  I was in charge of the party.  Other staff and some students helped a lot for which I was grateful. 

Some people know me as a sad and heavy-hearted person, which I am.  Some people know me as someone who plays and laughs and causes laughter.  I am that too.  Like my mother, I try to create fun in spite of much.  I will always credit her for that.

This week I've had great comedy sets at benefits for good causes. Thank you George Bettinger and Bill Drewes

The school year is over in two weeks. Also in that time my adventure as a theater arts "specialist", in Mayor Bill de Blasio's (pilot) after-school arts education program for middle-school students, ends.

I'm directing* the play, Ugly Is A Hard Pill, running July 16th, 18th & 19th; in the NYC Thespis Festival at the Hudson Guild Theater.

I've been educating myself in preparation for a run for my co-op board.

I'm still coloring my hair.

Rhonda Hansome is alive! See her do comedy and you will be too!

*www.DirectedByPassion.com