Alex Lyras was born in the Bronx and raised on the mean streets of Scarsdale, New York. 
He was schooled as a bachelor at Bucknell University where he played soccer and majored in philosophy, often simultaneously.
It was at Bucknell that he first discovered improvisational acting in the troupe Some Assembly Required. He also co-wrote and directed his fraternity’s annual Demi-Play.
In this instance, a parody called Julio & Romiet, which for all its frivolity was months and months of manual labor. From an original script, to casting 30 men (some dressed as women), to fight choreography and an original score, this endeavor for charity was an ice breaker into just how much “sweat equity” theatrical productions require.
After a focused law school trajectory flew off the rails and over the cliff during his first year at John Marshall law school in Chicago, Lyras found himself lingering around the infamous Second City Improvisation group.
When he returned to New York, he began a class at Chicago City Limits, Second City’s satellite school, where he learned the fundamentals of improvisation from teacher/director Robert McCaskill. A fifteen year writing and acting collaboration ensued.
His first solo performance, “desperelics”, was workshopped, developed and directed by McCaskill. The show addressed the hyperventilation post-grad twentysomethings were experiencing in Manhattan. The job market was arid in 1992, and the desperation to succeed intensified as a result.
It was the start of the dreaded greed-is-good era, and whoever was making the most bank, partying the hardest, and banging the hottest secretary behind their girlfriend’s back, claimed the dubious king of the hill title. Bonding with my former classmates over a more well rounded, less materialistic driven existence had become taboo. A relic.
“desperelics” hit a nerve with audiences during its run at the Gene Frankel Theater on Bond street. Characters included an adult education professor with a penchant for prodigious reading assignments and pedophilia, a drug delivery messenger who thinks he’s saving lives, a fitness trainer whose weakness for gambling keeps him pumped, a wired corporate lackey whose career maneuvers have enslaved him to a copy machine, and the inventor of the first Greek diner in America.
After attending a performance, Mike Nichol’s cast Alex in a bit role across from Annette Bening in “What Planet Are Your From?” He also recommended the HBO Workspace in Los Angeles. Lyras & McCaskill were fortunate enough to have the show produced there, and it led to a development deal with Warren Littlefield and NBC based on the characters.
Lyras & McCaskill had found a bit of a formula for working together and were happy to enter the world of TV writing in Los Angeles. But theater, and New York, was never pushed to the back burner.
Lyras wrote and directed a series of interlinked monologues called “All God’s Creatures”, in which a real priest, accidentally mistaken for an actor in costume, is dragged onto the set of a Law & Order episode shooting near his church. The priest gets the acting bug, and begins a downward spiral into the shady and competitive world of show business.
The first four monologues explore the absurd truth in Hollywood’s worst clichés: a PMS-ing Assistant Director, a satanicly seductive talent agent, a brain fried business manager, and a Tony-Robbins-meets-Friedrich-Nietzsche career seminar activist.
The story full circles following the priest in the next four monologues: bouncer, bartender, homeless man, real-estate broker. The show was developed and produced at the Actors Circle Theater in Los Angeles, and then at the Kraine Theater in New York. Most recently, it was produced in Memphis by actor/writer David Prete.
The next solo effort was “Unequalibrium”, co-written and directed by McCaskill, also produced on both coasts. The show was originally inspired by actual events: a five story brownstone on Dean Street in Brooklyn collapsed trapping its neighbors inside. There was a 48 hour FDNY search and salvage to save the residents. Lyras had worked at a production company on the street and followed the story.
But a few months into development at McCaskill’s studio, September 11th happened. Never before had these two writers been so trumped by reality. They plucked the few salvageable characters out from the old work and started to re-craft a story which would reference, but not directly address, the effects 9/11 had on New Yorkers.
The structure of “Unequalibrium” linked the characters much more directly than “desperelics”. Almost all of the characters crossed paths at the climax of the show. They included a science teacher shaken by an impending sabbatical, a Greek plumber with a fail-safe Black-Jack system, a laid-off web-designer with a confrontational girlfriend, and a criminally minded defense attorney stumbling into a botched murder/robbery
“Unequalibrium” was nominated for a 2003 Dramalogue Award and selected for publication in “New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2002″ as well as “Best Men’s Monologues For the Twenty First Century”. It led to another development deal for television, this time with Brillstein Grey.
It was during the writer’s strike in 2007 when “The Common Air” was born. This show, again co-written and directed by Robert McCaskill, ran for five months in Los Angeles in 2008 and then moved Off Broadway in 2009/2010.
A delay at JFK Airport, due to a terrorist threat, is the occasion for six travelers to reveal their philosophies, coping mechanisms, darkest secrets and theories about Muslim extremists. The final character, an Islamic American returning from Iraq, describes the radicalization he experienced and the car bombing he perpetrated. This revelation sheds light on the previous five characters and the self-deception they embody. The title comes from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass “this is the common air that bathes the globe”.
Characters include an Iraqi Cab Driver with a winning reality show idea, an Gallery Owner seduced by ancient Greek cave art, a Corporate Attorney imparting ethically gray advice, a DJ named PJ who has “usurped” music samples, a sinister Philosophy Professor mixing logic and irrationality in a west Texas accent, and an Iraqi-American just returned from civil war in Baghdad.
The production was nominated for Best Original Play by the L.A. Ovation Awards and won for Best Original Score. It was nominated by the Los Angeles Drama Critic’s Circle for Best Writing, Best Solo Performance and Best Sound Design, and LA Weekly Awards for Best Solo Performance, Best Comedy Direction, and Best Sound Design. The Los Angeles Times writes, “Tensile energy and unflagging skill in his well-crafted, must-see show.”
Lyras & McCaskill have sold four television pilots. They have also collaborated on 2 feature films. Lyras produced and starred in the McCaskill scripted independent romantic comedy, MONA, which won “Best Picture” at the 2008 Malibu Film Festival and received distribution from Indiepix and Cinetic Media. Lyras produced and acted in McCaskill’s directorial debut, Heterosexuals, a comedy concerning three stages of love.
Independently, Lyras has produced 6 short films. The most recent, Elegy, won best screenplay at The 15 Minutes of Fame festival. Not bad for a twelve minute short. Three minutes remains to be used.
Lyras’ most current screenplay, ALVA, recently won the Alfred P. Sloan Grant from the Tribeca Film Institute. Co-written with Michael Dorian, the film explores the controversial question of whether or not our greatest inventor was actually a thief with a knack for marketing.
Alex is a member of The Classical Theater Lab in Los Angeles, a non-profit group that explores everything from Shakespeare to Odets. He is also a member of the Writer’s Guild.
