By ORINDA NEWS EDITORIAL STAFF
Marty Nemko is a prominent Bay Area career counselor, having been a guest 100+ times on KGO’s Ronn Owens Show, a columnist in the Chronicle for six years, and a host in his 29th year of Work with Marty Nemko on KALW (NPR-San Francisco). His 11th book, Careers for Dummies, was just published. For one night only on Oct. 5, 2018, at 8:30 p.m., Marty Nemko will reprise his acclaimed one-man show, Odd Man Out, as a fundraiser for the Orinda Starlight Village Players (OrSVP) at the Orinda Community Center Amphitheater behind the buildings at 29 Orinda Way. All proceeds (tickets are $20 for adults, and $10 for seniors 65+ or children 18-) go to Orinda’s all-volunteer community theater. You can call 925-528-9225 or go online to info@orsvp.org to reserve seats. Nemko states his rationale in volunteering his talents without a fee: “I want to support the Orinda Starlight Village Players. I believe that local community theater is an under appreciated community resource, enriching not just the audience but the lives of everyone involved – from box office vendor to costumer to light/sound operator to director to actor. The Orinda Starlight Village Players has a special place in my heart, not just because its theater is just minutes from my home, but because it is all-volunteer: they do it purely for the love. But they need some money for costumes, sets and to buy the rights to perform plays. So, I encourage you to come see me perform my play and support this Orinda treasure: Orinda Starlight Village Players.” Nemko gives you a sense of what the evening might entail by starting with the general and working to the specifics of the evening’s unfolding experience: “Our veneer is thicker than ever. We’re less likely to be honest, whether for fear of offending someone, hurting our career, or damaging our personal life. “So, our Facebook profiles portray us as unobjectionable happy campers. Our cocktail party conversation is superficial talk about family, pop culture, and, if with political kindred spirits, Donald Trump.“But much lies beneath our veneer. Don’t you wish you could really be understood for who you are?“That’s a driving force behind my having created my one-man show, Odd Man Out. It peels back my curtain to see mainly my warts along with my beauty marks. I like to think the show’s benefit goes beyond encouraging others to be more candid. It embeds other life and career lessons, especially for those in the second half of our lives, but even for your children and grandchildren.” (The show is appropriate for kids 10 and up). “The show intersperses my stories with my piano playing (I was a busy pianist in New York City.) I’ll play everything from ragtime to Broadway show tunes. I’ll even do a Tom Lehrer song. For this performance, I’ll also accompany international performer Antonia Valdez on a few relevant songs,” Nemko adds. Nemko’s one-man show, Odd Man Out has been performed at venues such as San Francisco’s Koret Auditorium and, in a sold-out house, at the Napa Valley’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center. Reviewer Evy Warshawski, after viewing the Napa show, gushed, “Nemko hit it out of the park.”
For more information, visit http://www.orsvp.org.
