By Michelle Nosratian

 

English teacher Adam Howard ’93 and former Head of the Performing Arts Department Dan Fishbach ’94 performed side by side in playwright Howard Korder’s “Search and Destroy.” The play ran from July 10 through Aug. 23 in Hollywood.

“Search and Destroy” tells the story of Martin Mirkheim, an ambitious man who will let nothing—not even the $47,000 in taxes that he owes the state of Florida—stop him from becoming “the biggest threat there is” in the entertainment industry.

“The dark plays are often the fun ones because we get to really step outside ourselves as actors and explore territories that are outside our typical moral comfort zones,” Howard said. “[The play] is more of a warning piece: that ambition can get us all in the end, but that weakness can have just the same effect.”

In his journey to secure power and success, Mirkheim seeks help from a shady businessman named Kim, played by Howard, and Kim’s drug-dealing friend Ron, played by Fishbach, both pawns in his scheme to become a big-time filmmaker.

When faced with interpreting Korder’s character for himself, Howard had to look deep within himself for similarities.

“I couldn’t relate to Kim directly, so I approached him with a mixture of my own desire for adventure coupled with good old fashioned imagination,” Howard said. “Who wouldn’t want to play a narcissistic businessman who not only wields a gun at one point, but also gets bludgeoned to death at play’s end?”

Fishbach will direct Howard this October in “Private Eyes” at the Raven Playhouse in North Hollywood.