Framed by Patricia Ryan Madson’s maxims for ‘improvising your life’, stories by and about theater director Scott Kelman offer poignant and entertaining scenarios that demonstrate we really can be the characters we want to be. Madson’s principles like “Say Yes” and “Enjoy the Ride” come to life in Kelman’s stories about acting on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1960’s and moving to Los Angeles where he started a theater in LA’s skid row district during the early 1980’s. Once in LA, Kelman produced early performances by Whoopi Goldberg, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, John Cusack, John Densmore, Paul Krassner, Jan Munroe, Peter Bergman, John Fleck, and Kedric Robin Wolfe.