Mark Lundholm performs in 'Addicted: A Comedy of Substance' at the Coconut Grove Playhouse.

From addict to comedian to actor

Christine Dolen
Miami Herald
Published: Thursday, November 21, 2002

Mark Lundholm understands.

No matter what your poison -- alcohol, food, drugs, sex, work, the siren call of the Internet -- Lundholm can relate. He has personally swerved in and out of most of the lanes on what he calls the ''addiction highway.'' And he has been recovering, one day at a time, for the better part of 14 years.

At 43, Lundholm is about to execute another swerve, though this one is both healthy and ambitious. After years spent crisscrossing the country doing stand-up comedy for 40-some weeks a year, the Californian has transformed himself into a playwright-performer. His work -- his life, really -- is called Addicted: A Comedy of Substance, and it opens Friday in the Encore Room at Coconut Grove Playhouse.

Addicted is a sort of Odyssey about a man for whom change has been one of the few constants. Lundholm morphed from an attention-challenged kid he calls ''Ritalin Boy,'' part of a family so dysfunctional that he chooses ''evil'' to describe life at home in the '60s, into a drug addict, dealer and alcoholic. He did jail time, met and married a woman named Sharon, had a beautiful baby girl named Courtney, then disappeared onto the streets of Oakland, where he lived in a series of cardboard boxes when he wasn't doing drugs and deals.

Lundholm says that Sharon, now his ex-wife and friend, told him later of that period: ``We thought you were dead, and we were glad because we knew you couldn't hurt us any more.''

His maybe-this-isn't-working moment came when he broke into a room at a sleazy motel, gazed at a picture of his months-old baby girl and put the barrel of a loaded gun in his mouth. The gun jammed. He looked again at Courtney's picture, then went to rehab. It finally took.

Lundholm started doing stand-up comedy after he'd been sober for 60 days. One of his earliest gigs was at San Quentin, where the lifers sat on the other side of a cyclone fence. Lundholm spotted a huge, bald, tattooed guy in the front row and made a crack comparing the con to a ballpoint pen. The guy walked to the fence and said so that only Lundholm could hear: ''Hey, funny man. I got friends on the outside.'' Then he suggested what those friends could do to the comedian.

''Now that,'' says Lundholm, ``is a heckler.''

Today, the comedian-turned-actor is facing far happier challenges.

''In comedy clubs, it's funny, funny, funny, then a little serious. Patrons come out to drink and be distracted for an hour by Joy Boy,'' says Lundholm, a slender, muscular man with a shaved head and penetrating blue eyes.

``Theater is dark, serious, has depth. The show is very funny but also very serious. I'd work with some horrible moments in a comedy club, and people would stare at me.''

That's because his story often turns harrowing. He veers into tales of robbery, crack cocaine and roiling anger, all starring Mark, all from real life.

''The show encompasses everything from heroin to golf,'' says the laughing, intense Lundholm. ``Everything from mild addiction to deadly. Parts are very hard to watch. It's not an uncommon story. I have a lot of company as far as choosing a different road after being down a bad one.''

That's what attracted Arnold Mittelman, the Grove's producing artistic director, to Lundholm's play-in-the-making.

''Mark has done a major rewrite,'' says Mittelman. ``He has moved from the particular to the more universal and back to himself. It's a sharing that makes people identify with him more. He has to inhabit the character and make the journey of the play nightly, with the audience and with himself as an actor, eight times a week for several months. No ad libs. No manipulating the audience. So that this eventually can be done by another actor.''

Lundholm's personal assistant, Roseanne Berthlon-Arechiga, is a married mom who lives near him in San Jose. She keeps him ''. . . focused, balanced and humble,'' he says, adding, ``I fly around like a kite, and every once in a while she yanks the string.''

She says, ``He's intense, he's driven, he works very hard. The play keeps getting rewritten. He expects excellence of himself and others. You have to be tough to work with him, but he's not unreasonable or rude.''

Lundholm, painfully honest both onstage and off, admits to flaws.

``My nature is to be verbally aggressive. I'm a negative, critical, glass-half-empty perfectionist.''

Still, today he says, ``I feel lucky to be alive. Life is a gift. Then it's what you do with it that's your gift.''

Copyright 2002 Miami Herald

Performance type
Theater

Coconut Grove Playhouse
3500 Main Highway
Coconut Grove, FL 33133
(305) 442-4000
Fax: (305) 444-6437

Event Type
Run

Performance times
11/19/2002 - 02/09/2003

Ticket prices
Call 305-446-3857.