Brad Zimmerman hasn’t waited on a table since 2007. But he remembers every dithering diner who couldn’t decide between the duck and the lamb, and every cranky customer who flashed the international sign for “Check, please.”
Zimmerman didn’t get mad. He wrote a play.
He will perform his solo show, “My Son, the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy,” at this year’s “Chopshticks,” the South Bay Jewish community’s annual answer to the Christmas deluge. The event takes place Dec. 24 at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto. Local comedian Michael Capozzola opens.
Zimmerman waited tables for 27 years while he tried to make it as a New York actor. He also had a noodgy Jewish mother. Between those two influences, he mined enough material to fashion his show, which premiered in West Palm Beach, Fla. in 2007. Though he is a funny guy, Zimmerman insists he’s an actor first and a comedian … well, not even second.
“I’m really for theater,” he says. “If you go into a comedy club, they want a certain amount of punch lines per minute. I don’t worry about that. I worry about the truth. I’m emotionally driven. My stuff comes from my life. It’s a naked show. No sets. No music. It’s just me.”
The show’s subtitle might throw some people. Why a tragedy? Zimmerman, 57, is the first to admit he struggled mightily for many years: little money, few acting jobs, no girlfriend. As he says in the show, his idea of a summer vacation was “turning the fan on to high.”
But what really made it tragic: no bragging rights for his mother, who had to listen to her friends describe their own sons’ successes, while the best she could say was: “If all goes well, Brad might get a bookcase.”
“I have a huge section [of the show] on my Jewish mother,” Zimmerman says. “You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate it. My life has been an enormous struggle. But after working very hard for a long period of time, I realized why I’m here on this planet.”
Zimmerman was born in Bergen County, N.J., which has a sizable Jewish population and was “a great place to grow up.” Though he says his family wasn’t observant, they went to synagogue and observed the holidays. He also had a bar mitzvah and attended a Hebrew high school program. “I love being a Jew,” Zimmerman adds. “I feel that’s something I was born to be. It suits me.”
He also was a gifted athlete, and throughout his youth, he hoped to turn pro in either soccer, tennis or basketball. But he caught the acting bug while in college, then moved to the Big Apple to pursue the dream.
That turned into a bad dream of under-tipping, double shifts and memorizing the daily specials. He admits the challenges of breaking into Broadway intimidated him, but starting in the early 1990s he began exploring standup comedy as a creative outlet. It stuck.
He slowly honed the craft and eventually landed good gigs, including opening for Joan Rivers and the late, great George Carlin. Zimmerman became a regular at New York comedy clubs and also snagged roles in soap operas such as “Loving” and “All My Children” and TV shows including “The Sopranos.”
His original love of theater proved too strong, however, and he shifted away from the comedy clubs toward his one-man show. Zimmerman credits his failures for not only toughening him up, but teaching him to persevere.
That attitude has landed him a development deal for a sitcom, though for now Zimmerman is happy to bring the story of his life to live audiences. “It’s not the money that drives me,” he says. “It’s putting out a product that’s real and authentic.”
Then he pulls out his favorite Oscar Wilde quote, which he says got him through some hard times. “ ‘Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.’ That’s what I do. I’m just being me.”
”Chopshticks,” 7:30 p.m. Dec. 24 at the Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. $50-$65. (650) 223-8609 or www.paloaltojcc.org.