#sparkchamber 041618 — Charlotte Booker

Today, #sparkchamber welcomes actor and writer Charlotte Booker. Based in New York City, formerly Los Angeles, born in the Midwest, and growing up everywhere, Charlotte has over thirty years’ experience on stage, film, and television. She had the “singular privilege” of appearing in both Broadway revivals of Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday: first with Ed Asner and Madeline Kahn in 1989, and again in the 2011 production starring Jim Belushi, Robert Sean Leonard, and Nina Arianda. She is a well-known and respected actor in regional theater both in the US and abroad, and garnered rave reviews as Ann Landers in the solo show The Lady with All the Answers.

On television, Charlotte recurs as Maggie Chambers on Starz Network’s Power, and has guest- and co-starred on shows from Boardwalk Empire to The Larry Sanders Show, and just about everything in between

Fans of downtown NYC comedy will remember her as the co-creator/curator of Cause Celeb!, the weekly show featuring highly-theatrical readings from celebrity autobiographies that ran for over four years. Still a fan of reading aloud, she records books for the NYPL's Heiskell Library, the Library of Congress, and Audible.com.

See what else she is up to at her website.

1.] Where do ideas come from?

The ether. The past, meaning childhood. Trees and rocks and everything more solid than we are that keep them for us.

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?

This is the most difficult question so far, and the answers that first come to mind are embarrassingly gooey, but it all comes down to our transience. 

3.] Early bird or night owl, tortoise or hare? 

I work when I can’t stand avoiding it one more second. I need a lot of floor space for thought. It rushes out if the writing implement and paper are right, then it doesn’t, and I play with floor space, literal floor space, until it’s not a puzzle but a picture, and then the real work begins.

4.] How do you know when you are done?

You write The End, but you’re never done.