Weather 
This January, the Jersey Shore Arts Center will become the staging ground for a masterclass in psychological warfare. Under the sharp, unflinching direction of Theo Devaney, Edward Albee’s seminal masterpiece, At Home at the Zoo, finds new life in a production that promises to be as visceral as it is intellectual. At the heart of this revival are two powerhouses of the craft: three-time Emmy winner and daytime icon Christian Jules LeBlanc and acclaimed Off-Broadway actor and Ruth Stage Chairman Matt de Rogatis.
As the driving force behind Ruth Stage’s bold reimagining of the classics, de Rogatis has built a reputation for “diagnostic” intensity, while LeBlanc brings a legendary depth of nuance to the stage. In the following exclusive Op-Ed series, both actors speak at length, pulling back the curtain on their “excavations” of Peter and Jerry—two men locked in an existential struggle on a park bench.
At Home at the Zoo, also starring Broadway leading lady Nancy Lemenager (Chicago, Movin’ Out) as Ann, opens January 15th for three nights only. Do not miss this limited engagement. Tickets are available now at RuthStage.org and Eventbrite. Use promo code RUTHSTAGE for an exclusive discount.
A DIAGNOSTIC APPROACH TO JERRY
By Matt de Rogatis
When my mentor Bob Lamb and I founded Ruth Stage in 2018, our mission was an evolving target. In truth, I’m not sure we possessed a specific manifesto at inception, but as time has passed and I have stepped into the role of Chairman, that mission has become crystal clear: To reimagine classic works through a psychologically visceral lens. Better said, we aim to excavate the trauma buried within the text and present the human condition, in all its rawness, to our audiences.
There were only ever two paths I truly wanted to walk: that of the actor and that of the psychologist. While I hold multiple degrees in literature and psychology—including a master’s from Rutgers University—I am not a board-certified clinician. However, that hasn’t stopped me from merging these two passions into a singular creative engine. My process as an actor is a method I call Diagnostic Immersion. It begins with a clinical detachment; I observe the character through the lens of a psychologist, tediously dissecting his syntax, his environment, his history, and the specific things he chooses to say—as well as those things said about him. Only after this exhaustive examination do I assign a formal diagnosis. The second phase is the transformation: I must become the patient and fully inhabit that diagnosis.
I am perhaps best known for portraying Brick Pollitt in the 2022 and 2023 Off-Broadway premieres of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I believe the resonance of that interpretation was born from this exact clinical rigor. While Brick is often played as a passive figure, my therapeutic analysis revealed a far more complex architecture. Beyond the surface-level alcoholism and depression, I uncovered a narcissistic family structure that had birthed deep-seated schizoidal traits. This made my Brick not just a quiet drinker, but a volatile live wire of a man paralyzed by his own internal defenses.
Now, as I step into the park with Edward Albee’s Jerry in At Home at the Zoo, I find myself facing an entirely different, yet equally jagged, psychological landscape. This past September, we staged The Zoo Story at the Jersey Shore Arts Center—part of Ruth Stage’s strategic initiative to develop productions in Asbury Park as conduits for Off-Broadway transfers. Starring opposite three-time Emmy winner Christian Jules LeBlanc, I approached Jerry with the same diagnostic rigor I applied to Brick, seeking to peel back the layers of a character often dismissed as a mere “vagabond.”
What my research uncovered is that Jerry is a man who demands to be seen. Brimming beneath the surface is a formidable, serrated intellect—the kind of mind that, under different circumstances, might have thrived in the same ivory towers his counterpart, Peter, inhabits. Jerry’s tragedy is not a lack of potential, but a profound arrest, likely in his early, dysfunctional development. He speaks of his parents’ deaths with a chilling, detached irony, famously describing their passing as a “vaudeville act playing the cloud circuit now” while sarcastically reinforcing, “I’m broken up about it too…I mean really.”
Through a clinical lens, this detachment reveals something much darker than mere cynicism. There is a profound, primary identity disturbance in Jerry—a specific mental health pathology that serves as the engine for his descent. He isn’t just “unraveling”; he is executing a meticulously prepared plan of assisted suicide, driven by a condition that makes genuine human contact both a desperate necessity and a terrifying impossibility.
After one of our summer performances, we held an audience talk-back where I explained the mechanics of my Diagnostic Immersion process. As the night concluded, a man approached me. “I’ve been a practicing psychologist for over thirty years,” he said. “What I just saw on that stage—that was Bipolar Disorder.”
I felt an immediate sense of vindication. Bipolar Disorder was one of the two primary diagnoses I had mapped for Jerry. The other was Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)—a condition frequently associated with females in clinical settings, yet one that remains dangerously underdiagnosed among men. Jerry is a haunting overlap of both. His grandiosity and the sheer velocity of his speech suggest a manic state, but his desperate, clawing need to be validated by Peter—and the subsequent violent reaction when Peter attempts to reject his “story” about the dog—is classic BPD. Jerry exists in a state of “stable instability.” He cannot handle the existential abandonment of being ignored on a park bench. This is reinforced throughout the play when he repeatedly asks Peter, “You’re not thinking of leaving are you?” It’s a desperate attempt to maintain a human connection that he cannot sustain.
This brings us to the structure of the play. It is no coincidence that Albee wrote “The Story of Jerry and the Dog” as one of the longest monologues in modern theater. He did not do this for theatrical vanity; but rather for psychological truth. To an actor, it is a terrifying mountain to climb – laid bare on the stage for over 10 minutes of compulsive dialogue. To a psychologist, it is Pressured Speech—a symptom where a patient feels an irresistible urge to keep talking to avoid an internal collapse.
Jerry holds Peter hostage with his words because the moment he stops speaking, he ceases to exist in the eyes of another. The length of the text is a direct reflection of Jerry’s terror: if the story ends, the connection ends. And if the connection ends, Jerry is forced back into the poison of his own seclusion—retreating to a pathetic, solitary rooming house cell furnished with two empty picture frames and a cold hot plate. Albee understood that for a man like Jerry, silence is not peace—it is death. The fact that we never actually hear what happened at the zoo tells us that this was never a ‘zoo story’ at all; rather, it is a man’s frantic, final attempt to bridge the gap between his own terminal isolation and the rest of humanity. By forcing Peter to listen, Jerry is performing a psychological transfusion—bleeding his own trauma into another human being just to prove he is still alive. It is the ultimate Borderline desperation.
Having only lived in Jerry’s skin for three performances this past September, I realize that I have barely scratched the surface of this iconic, labyrinthine character.
Now, I step back into the park, carrying the heavy weight of these mental and mood disorders into our production of At Home at the Zoo. In many ways, Jerry is the ultimate evolution of the “broken masculinity” that has become a signature of my roles with Ruth Stage. He is a man stripped of his armor, fighting to exist in a world that has already looked away. There is still so much more to unlock within his fractured psychological landscape, and I invite you to witness that trauma in real-time. If you want to see a clinical diagnosis manifest into a living, breathing, and volatile reality, join us in the park starting January 15th. The bench is waiting.
THE INNOCENT MONSTER
By Christian Jules LeBlanc
I think of all the years that transpired between my character, “Peter”, leaving his home on 74th Street, and his settling in on his favorite bench in Central Park. Edward Albee’s entire career occurred during that stroll from Lex and 3rd to the park. Any New Yorker will tell you that entire worlds can be born and destroyed within the space of a few city blocks.
The Zoo Story was my first encounter with Albee as an actor. I knew that the author was unhappy with my character, “Peter” and referred to his first big success as a “one and a half character piece.”
Before opening in The Zoo Story, I had read its prequel Homelife and had marveled at the impact of the new first act but decided to set it aside and give myself the freedom to build the character as had been done all those years from 1958 to 2004 when Homelife never existed.
I found that my ultimate task was to make “Peter” a perfect target for “Jerry.” The conflicts were apparent: rich vs poor, proper vs louch, animal vs vegetable. “Jerry’s” monologue became, for me, the slingshot that justified the explosion at the end of the play.
In our upcoming run in Asbury Park, New Jersey, we will be performing both acts, At Home at the Zoo. With the addition of Albee’s first act, EVERYTHING becomes heightened! As the actor I am thoroughly terrified and delighted! All the complexity; the games, the shadows and secrets, the violent intimacies…it’s as if “Jerry’s” brilliant monologue from the second act blazes into life in the first act before the audience ever meets “Jerry”.
Now, as “Peter” listens to “Jerry” he is stripped bare of his comfortable lies in a much more brutal fashion. His declaration in the first act, “I’m not like that.” is demolished.
Albee tips his hand a bit by stating “Peter’s” admiration for Baudelaire, who wrote, “What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
In Homelife Albee gives the audience “Peter’s” wife: “Ann”, and her line, “You’re good at making love…but you’re lousy at fuing.” And through the painful conversation of a long-time married couple questioning the unspoken compromises they have perhaps unknowingly made; “Peter’s” creation story is revealed. I find walking into the park in the second act with that raw nerve exposed changes everything.
Because of the “new” first act the play’s ending becomes even more of a dark liberation. “Jerry” confirms that “Peter” is an “animal” even as he dies. Again, I find Baudelaire sets the perfect tone, “The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil.”
I thank Baudelaire for the incongruous term, “innocent monster”. It’s akin to Ann’s slap near the end of Act I. In Albee’s universe the raw truth of the character, goes beyond words, it is distilled to blood and guts, like an animal, like the black growling dog. “Peter” is the innocent who is forced to rediscover the monster inside. “Ann’s” hard truths make “Peter’s” encounter with “Jerry” much more dangerous…and actually, much more fun to play.
