In this Hollywoodland News exclusive interview, Regina Luz Jordan talks with Dan Lauria about his play, Just Another Day, and it leaves us in our feels.
Dan Lauria has always had a voice that made people stop and listen, whether it was as the tough-but-tender dad on The Wonder Years, or commanding a Broadway stage
But in his newest play, Just Another Day, Lauria isn’t just performing. He’s pleading with us to remember, not just the good times or the funny lines, but the people who are slowly losing themselves to time, dementia and a world that no longer makes room for the aging, especially the brilliant, creative ones.
I didn’t expect this play to hit so close to home. My husband lost his father to Parkinson’s. We’ve seen up close how memory becomes a battlefield, how laughter and light still fight to break through the fog. So when I read that Lauria wrote this play to honor that stubborn spark of creativity that survives even as the mind fades, I knew this wasn’t just a role. This was a calling.
“The only remembrance will be if a great play is written that can be produced when future wars begins” – Dan Lauria, Just Another Day
Theater Is the Oral History of Society
Lauria doesn’t mince words about why he wrote Just Another Day. “Theater is our oral history,” he said. “All those poor people in Ukraine will be reduced to a line or two in our history books 100 years from now. I’m a Vietnam vet, and in 25 more years, that war will be forgotten. The only remembrance will be if a great play is written that can be produced when future wars begin.”
He’s not wrong. That quote alone hits harder than most scripted TV these days, and it’s no accident. Lauria’s passion for the stage isn’t nostalgia. It’s preservation. Not of relics, but of truths and the emotional wreckage history leaves behind when no one writes it down. Of people like his mentor Charles Durning, who acted well into his 80s before Alzheimer’s took him, and who never missed a year without doing a play.
Lauria isn’t just writing to entertain. He’s writing to make sure people remember.
He also made it clear that this fight for memory can’t happen without people like Beth Wheat and the Big Bear Theatre Project. “Especially now, when funding for the arts will be eliminated or at best censored.” That’s not just a local plug. It’s a warning.
“The older I get and the more it takes to remember things – the clearer my character becomes because it’s already part of me.” – Dan Lauria, Just Another Day
When Memory Comes Roaring Back
Dan Lauria didn’t set out to write a tragedy. He wrote a return. Not a full one. Not a permanent one. Just a flicker of clarity that crashes through the dark and says, I’m still here.
It came from a real moment. Lauria visited his 95-year-old friend Lou Auger, who has dementia. Lou didn’t recognize him. Not at first. Then they started talking about the Yankees. “He told us about seeing Babe Ruth when he was five years old,” Lauria said. “He couldn’t stop talking about the great old players. Then he suddenly knew who we were.”
That shift, that lightning bolt of memory, became the heart of Just Another Day. In the play, Lauria swapped out baseball for old movies, but the effect is the same. A creative spark that doesn’t just survive memory loss. It defies it.
“I want the audience to understand that the creative spirit never dies,” he said. “All the other plays I’ve seen or read have to do with how the family deals with dementia. This is the only play on this subject, that I know of, that is not about the family or the hospital conditions. This play is about the creative spirit that lives on no matter what.”
Lauria makes it clear he didn’t write this to wallow in decline.
The two characters in the play aren’t cautionary tales. They’re comedy writers. Smart ones. “It’s a natural instinct to let out a punch line after a verbal set up,” he said. “I want the audience to know, see and hear this natural reaction from two creative people.”
This isn’t a medical drama. It’s a fight to be seen. A moment onstage where memory, humor and humanity refuse to disappear quietly.
“This play is about the creative spirit that lives on no matter what.” – Dan Lauria, Just Another Day
Scene Partners Who Still Steal the Show
Dan Lauria isn’t taking this journey alone. He brought along a powerhouse, Patty McCormack, the Oscar-nominated actress who haunted a generation in The Bad Seed.
When the production first came to life at Shadowland Stages in New York, McCormack stepped in with just two days of rehearsal. She held the script in her hands through the run. She still nailed it. “She did the three week run with book in hand and was brilliant,” Lauria said.
That’s when he made the call. “I told her to memorize the play because we will do it again.” She did. They took it to New York City. Then Trinity College in Dublin. “We did the play at the Samuel Beckett Theater at Trinity College in Dublin,” he said. “Patty and I are looking forward to going back to Ireland in October and to a run at NJrep [New Jersey Repertory Company] in December.”
These aren’t two actors chasing a final bow. They’re still learning from each other. They’re both still showing up and still doing the work because it means something. “Patty learns what not to do from me,” Lauria said. “And I learn what I should be doing from her. It makes for a lot of fun on stage.”
The rhythm between them isn’t nostalgia. It’s trust. It’s timing. It’s two veterans in sync and in the moment. They’re not performing their past. They’re living their present. That kind of back-and-forth, that real mutual respect, is rare. These are two artists at the top of their craft keeping each other sharp and honest and playful, in front of an audience that can feel every beat of it.
“I want the audience to know, see and hear this natural reaction from two creative people.” – Dan Lauria, Just Another Day
What Acting Has Lost
Dan Lauria isn’t subtle about how much the industry has changed. And not for the better.
“I hate where film and TV are going with constant cutting,” he said. “Directors no longer direct. They just fill editing machines.”
He’s not being dramatic. He’s being honest. The man’s been around long enough to see acting stripped down to content, stripped again to metrics, and shoved through an algorithm. None of it impresses him.
“I hate the idea of self tapes instead of auditioning in a room with the writer and director present,” he said. “It’s a shame that the current generation of studio execs have no respect for the art of acting.”
Lauria came up in a time when all you had to bring was the work. No Instagram following. No self-produced highlight reels. Just presence. Just talent. “No one ever asked me for a reel or disk or self tape,” he said. “Or how many people do I have on my Facebook. I only had to learn to act. Something you can only do on stage.”
That’s why he never left the theater. Not for awards or clout. For craft. For connection. “Once the curtain goes up it’s about me and my fellow actors and the response from the audience.”
He watched his mentor, Charles Durning, keep doing plays every year until Alzheimer’s forced him to stop at 86. Lauria’s doing the same. Because no matter what the industry forgets, he remembers what matters.
“Once the curtain goes up it’s about me and my fellow actors and the response from the audience. I’ve never went a year without doing a play and neither did Charles Durning untill he was 86 and got Alzheimers.” – Dan Lauria, Just Another Day
Dignity Isn’t a Luxury. It’s the Point.
Theater has always been a mirror. But most plays about dementia reflect fear. Decline. Loss. Dan Lauria wrote Just Another Day to show what still remains.
“I’m an actor who writes not a writer who acts.” – Dan Lauria
He didn’t want to write another story about hospitals or caretakers or families falling apart. He wanted to show two characters who still had spark. Wit. Timing. History. They were comedy writers once. They still are. Their timing might be off, their memories might be fragile, but the rhythm is still there.
“We’ve had many rave reviews,” Lauria said. “But the comment that has stuck with me came after a reading for NJ Rep’s board of directors. A woman in her 40s said, ‘I’m dealing with this with my mother. Thank you for not making the characters stupid.’”
That one line said it all. Because it’s so easy to write people off when they forget your name or can’t track a sentence. Lauria refuses to do that. He honors the intelligence still buried inside the fog. He builds scenes around the things these characters can do, not what they’ve lost.
“I want the audience to know, see and hear this natural reaction from two creative people,” he said. “It’s a natural instinct to let out a punch line after a verbal set up.”
He doesn’t need to explain the value of humor or connection. He just lets it live onstage. It’s dignity by way of comedy. And it hits harder than pity ever could.
As Long As We Create
Stories like Just Another Day don’t end in a blackout. They linger. They echo. They remind us that even when memory slips away, the impulse to create never fully disappears.
That’s the part that hit me hardest. I’ve watched someone fade. I’ve seen what Parkinson’s took from my husband’s father. I’ve seen from my aging grandparents, how quick people were to talk around someone instead of to them. I’ve watched the way silence creeps in and how hard you have to fight to hold onto joy.
Dan Lauria isn’t trying to fix that. He’s trying to face it. With humor. With honesty. With love. And with two characters who refuse to stop being creative just because the world starts treating them like they’re already gone.
“The one line that I hope lives on now that the play is published,” he said, “is ‘As long as we create, we are not lost.’”
That’s not just a line in a script. That’s the mission. That’s the legacy. That’s the reason we keep telling stories, even when people stop listening. Because someone out there will remember.
Keep the Memory Alive
If you’ve ever watched someone disappear while still sitting beside you, this play will stay with you. Just Another Day honors what remains: the spark, the laughter, the fight. It’s a story about memory, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s about legacy. About refusing to be erased.
To support that mission, you can donate to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America or attend a performance of Just Another Day when it comes to your city. The play heads next to Ireland in October and NJ Rep in December. Dates and details coming soon, and if you’re lucky enough to catch it live, bring tissues and someone you love.
This is the kind of storytelling that reminds us we’re still here. Still fighting. Still creating.
Because as Dan Lauria says, “As long as we create, we are not lost.”
ABOUT DAN LAURIA Dan Lauria, best known as “The Dad” in the 1980s – ‘90s hit television series, ‘The Wonder Years’, has appeared in over seventy television episodic programs, more than twenty ‘Movie of the Week’ productions, over 50 professional stage productions, plus a score of motion picture credits. He has worked with many of the great stars of our era. He and his dear friend and partner Wendie Malick co created the Durango Play Festival which supports the development of new plays. He is a passionate and impactful champion for meaningful storytelling, and writers, artists and producers with a keen understanding of the importance of these art forms to our society. On the importance and meaning of theater, Dan said, “Live theater is the oral history of our society. 100 years from now, the Ukrainian war will be just one line in a history book and will be forgotten unless someone writes a great play about it, which is performed from generation to generation.” Dan is an “actor’s actor”. When asked about his most memorable moments on stage, he credits those he has worked with, such as Patty McCormack, Wendie Malick, Judith Light, Jack Klugman, Peter Falk and Charles Durning, whom he considers his mentor. This is Dan’s second production with The Big Bear Theatre Project, a professional theater company that he wishes to see “live on forever”. His play, ‘Just Another Day’ is to bring awareness of “the Silver growing problem of dementia and Alzheimer’s.” In addition to appearing in ‘Just Another Day’, Dan Lauria is hosting a Lecture on Acting with Q & A, on June 17th also at The Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center. This is a tremendous opportunity for an intimate conversation with one of America’s acting greats, for anyone who loves any aspect of television, film and theater.
ABOUT THE BIG BEAR THEATRE PROJECT
The Big Bear Theatre Project is a California non-profit, professional theatre company dedicated to producing innovative, quality theatrical presentations creating a legacy of exceptional and sustainable regional theater. We are located at sparkling high altitude in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California, surrounded by pristine national forest and bejeweled with a sapphire lake.
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