Funnyman Will Luera shows a serious side in 'Entangled'

When Sarasota theater patrons hear the name “Will Luera,” they’re likely to think of humor and improvisation. Rightly so. For a decade ending in December 2024, Luera was the director of improvisation at Florida Studio Theatre, where he was in charge of programming and education for FST Improv as well as organizing the wildly successful Sarasota Improv Festival, which comes to town each July.

But one of Sarasota's prominent funnymen is taking a serious turn for his show, "Entangled," which runs May 15-25 at FSU Center for the Performing Arts. The show is the second production of Lifeline Productions, which Luera and his wife, Maria Schaedler-Luera, recently joined as co-executive directors. 

Best known for its debut production, "Clowns Like Me," a one-man show starring Sarasota actor Scott Ehrenpreis dealing with his mental health struggles in a humorous fashion, Lifeline is dedicated to highlighting the healing benefits of the arts. 

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When Lifeline founder and executive producer Joel Ehrenpreis heard that Luera was leaving FST last year, he approached him about the possibility of doing a show on the mental health benefits of improv.

The two initially met about eight years ago, they said in a video interview, when Ehrenpreis took an improv class with Luera at FST. Ehrenpreis, a former marketing executive, formed a friendship with Luera based on discussions about how humor and improv can be used to improve interaction in the business world.

But when Ehrenpreis and Luera sat down to talk about a one-man show, the improv expert revealed lots of serious, challenging episodes from his past. “As we started the process of developing our next show, Will reflected on traumatic stories,” Ehrenpreis says. “I said, ‘Time out, this is about you and your story.’ I was intrigued. So we ended up shifting gears, like you do in improv.”

Without revealing too much of the story of “Entangled,” the show is based on Luera’s life, which begins in Chicago and moves to Boston. “My upbringing wasn’t exactly a storybook upbringing,” Luera says. “My parents had a very severe divorce when I was 8 years old. Later on, a couple of my close friends died by suicide, which is why I went to Boston.”

Although Luera is a skilled performer and administrator, he needed help fleshing out his show. “In the first couple versions of script, it was like a TED talk about improv, but then during rehearsals, stories were coming up.That’s when we decided to go to Jason,” he says.

The aforementioned Jason is director/playwright Jason Cannon. An FST veteran, Cannon wrote the script for “Clowns Like Me” after spending hours with Scott Ehrenpreis listening to stories about the actor’s lifetime battle with OCD, bipolar disorder, social anxiety and more.

Until Ehrenpreis bared his soul, most Sarasota theatergoers weren’t aware of his mental health journey since his behavioral issues weren’t apparent in his performances. He was most recently on stage in Sarasota Jewish Theatre’s “Lost in Yonkers” and has appeared in such FST productions “The Lehman Trilogy” and “Network.”

Cannon is skilled at taking raw material and turning it into a finished script ready for the stage. According to Luera and Joel Ehrenpreis, Cannon was able to work the same magic as a creative consultant for “Entangled” that he did as a writer for “Clowns Like Me.”

A one-man show gets a second player

During the workshop process when he was polishing his script, Luera met with Cannon one or two times a week over several months. Cannon brought in different actors for Luera to play his ideas off of. Originally, Luera had envisioned “Entangled” as a one-man show, but after working with Cannon, he decided to change direction.

“We added a second character,” Luera says. “Jason would describe the character as a wild man.” 

Freud might call him Luera’s id, the aspect of his character that is kept in check by the practical ego and the superego, considered one’s conscience.

Reliving some of his most harrowing experience was healing, Luera says, but it wasn’t easy. “It was like going to therapy,” he says. “I was getting bombarded by questions by four different people. There were a lot of rehearsals where I was crying.”

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It takes a lot of courage to remove one’s professional mask and reveal real-life trauma on stage, even within the artistic confines of a script and a stage. For producer Ehrenpreis, one of the attractions about Luera’s story is that it provided the opportunity to confront the stigma of mental health problems in the Latin American community.

It’s always dangerous to make sweeping generations about various ethnic groups, but the conventional wisdom is that the tradition of machismo in Latin cultures makes it hard for men to admit weakness and let their loved ones know when they need help.

The key to making a play interesting to audiences of all backgrounds is to have a story “that resonates with everybody,” says Maria Schaedler-Luera, Will’s wife. “A successful piece of art must be personal and universal at the same time.”

This is a message that the couple conveys constantly through Atomica Arts, the nonprofit they founded that offers workshops, bilingual programs and other initiatives to promote the arts and health.

But in an artistic world where taboos about addiction, sexuality, gender identity, neurodivergence are increasingly confronted on stage, what is the secret sauce that an identity-based play needs to connect with broader audiences?

As a producer who got an encore performance for “Clowns Like Me” in Sarasota as well as a New York run, Joel Ehrenpreis has a a clear idea about the ingredients. Based on what he learned with “Clowns Like Me,” the producer says a production must be “entertaining, hopeful, humorous and gut-punching.”

“We think we’ve got that with ‘Entangled,’” he adds. Now, it’s up to Sarasota audiences to decide.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the name of Will Luera.