No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments
Brooke Berman
Random House, 2010

by Robin Galen Kilrain~

You may have been there yourself. Well, maybe not literally there (428 East 9th Street in the East Village, New York City).Or there (285 Mott Street in SoHo). Or even there (48 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn). But perhaps, instead, in a number of unique apartments in neighborhoods full of character in LA or other cities. Playwright Brooke Berman probably has you beat in quantity if not quality, though. In her book No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments, Berman reminisces about the more than three dozen spaces she sampled between 1988 and 2008. Recounting in intimate detail — sometimes humorous, sometimes heart tugging, sometimes both — her lengthy quest for a stable and fulfilling home, Berman finds her plethora of housing situations ultimately serving as both backstory and catalyst for her burgeoning theatre career and deepening self-knowledge. As in the theatre itself, however, Hell Week is necessary before a smooth run can take off. Berman’s time of challenges just happens to last two decades instead.

Movement prompted by seemingly random life circumstances (or even by direction from Anne Bogart, who reinspired Berman’s performance aspirations after a “bitter” acting teacher turned her off pursuing a theatre degree as an actor) can facilitate the revelation of truths. Berman both reveals and revels in those unveiled by her frequent uprootings, as they help her better understand her relationships and, as the book’s title implies, her idea of home. Along the way, her theatre life evolves as well. From Barnard to Bogart and from Juilliard to New Dramatists, Berman broadens her focus from actor to performing artist and from playwright to playwright-teacher. Once she includes LA on her radar, she also adds screenwriter to her developing career mix.

Berman closes her saga by pronouncing the decades-long journey “a successful endeavor.” Her hard work, along with increasing doses of faith, has led her to the type of life she fervently longed for: She splits her time between NYC and LA, writes both plays and movies, and continues to teach writing. She has found a “home” in many ways, having finally reached a place of relative comfort within herself and the world at large. And with a special significant other [at press time for this review, Berman had just announced her elopement with said man]. Now, rather than being a visitor to New Dramatists “Seventh Heaven” temporary residence, she has a figurative one of her own creation.

You may find yourself following Berman’s part travelogue/part coming-of-age tale with a bit of déjà vu (the latter description seems to apply, regardless of the fact that Berman’s age is well beyond any that such stories usually refer to, being 30 the year she graduated from the playwrights program at Juilliard). If not personally familiar with a “gypsy” lifestyle, you may,at least, have been forced to realize the hard truth that pursuing a career in any theatrical field takes enormous perseverance and, more often than not, years of scrambling to pay rent with any ease. In Berman’s case, various theatrical workshops, residencies and awards accumulated over time, as a loving-yet-ever-dramatic mother, a spiritual healer and numerous lovers played supporting roles to her lead while she attempted to move forward. Together, they carried her toward the conclusion that transience, rather than having been an obstacle, had always been a boon to her overall growth. It appears that all the movement at last brought an end to Berman’s Hell Week; a long, smooth, run now seems imminent — and well deserved.