Danny Pitt Stoller:  

Life I was born on November 19th, 1977 in the town of New Paltz, New York. My parents, Lesley Stoller and Myla Pitt, were living in New Paltz while my mother was studying there. My mother graduated from SUNY New Paltz in 1979, and the three of us moved down to the Long Island suburb of Great Neck. I was always a very verbal child; among my earliest interests were writing, singing, performing. When I was four, I wrote a book called Tokiss. The title came from a word I made up, meaning boy. The story was about a lonely boy who needed someone to play with. I was overjoyed when, two years later, my family was joined by another tokiss: my brother Sam. He was born at home, and as a six-year-old I was present for his birth. When I was twelve, my grandpa Nat published a collection of my writings, under the title Rhymes and Reasons. The back cover featured a picture of me with my little brother. In eighth grade, I became very involved with Levels, a youth center in Great Neck. (For a list of all the plays in which I performed, click here.) There I found my social niche for the first time, and met many people who still are among my dearest friends. At age thirteen, I chose to have a bar mitzvah (although I had not had a religious upbringing, I developed an interest in my Jewish heritage at that time). We celebrated my rite of passage at the Ethical Humanist Society. A lot of major shifts in my life happened while I was in high school. In the summer of 1992, my family moved from our small two-bedroom apartment to a house on Nassau Road. In January 1993, my sister Evelyn was born; she was named for my grandmother, Evelyn Pitt, who had died the previous year. In October of 1993, I began dating Wendy Wisner (who is now my wife). In 1994, both my grandpa Nat and my grandma Rose died. That was a very hard time for me. My essay about the death of my grandpa Nat, which I submitted to the school newspaper as a personal column, reflected a lot of my thoughts and feelings at the time. During the summers while I was in college, I kept going back to Levels and directing original pieces there. In 1997 I wrote my first full-length musical, a new adaptation of Pinocchio. It was produced at Levels that summer; I directed the show and I also appeared as Geppetto in the production. In 1998 I had a busy summer: I directed and starred in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens at Levels; I worked as a literary intern at the American Place Theatre in New York City; and, at the end of the summer, I traveled to Scotland to perform with the Pen...Expand for more