Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
A Screened Reading
of
The Alphabet City Monologue

BOUNCING BACK
The Story of Richie’s Guitar Shop

Starring
CATE WEINBERG

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

Richie’s Guitar Shop, like Richie Baxt himself, has nine lives and counting. Tucked into a tiny apartment near Eleventh and Avenue A, he tinkers all day long. From tiny fixes to building entire guitars from scrap parts, he is never still.

In this interview monologue from 2012, CATE WEINBERG talks like Richie while fussing with a repair and answering the phone. Yes, the neighborhood has changed. Kids used to come in for lessons. Now their parents send them to fancy schools. Richie loves repairing the guitars, so that’s all he does now, always working from his lap instead of a worktable.

He had a long career as a probation officer, which offered him personal interaction with people he could try to instruct and advise. He walked away from that in 1995. Despite his Master’s Degree and the promise of a cozy retirement check, he decided to do what he enjoyed most off all. Touching guitars. Caressing them, actually.

He is considered very Zen. He charges low, not inflated, fees. Long ago he decided that “New York is the world”. He found his little niche of heaven just before the real estate market went insane. His place wasn’t cheap, but he owns it free and clear. He smiles.

Richie’s business card says “Psychotherapy Extra”. This monologue shows that just talking to him is psychotherapy, if you listen closely. Good vibes.

-Karen D’Onofrio-