Rob Lowe shares stories from his life, career in solo show
Rob Lowe could tell you stories. In fact, that’s exactly what he wants to do.
From his early days as a teen idol in the 1980s amid the group of young Hollywood actors known as the Brat Pack to his TV roles on “The West Wing” and “Parks and Recreation,” from hard-partying through recovery and parenthood, Lowe’s life became such a collection of star-studded anecdotes that he was often told he should write a book.
So he did, with his 2011 memoir “Stories I Only Tell My Friends.” A few years later he wrote another memoir, “Love Life.”
Now he’s coming to San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts to literally tell you stories in his aptly named solo show, “Stories I Only Tell My Friends: Live!”
“When I got asked about doing a third book, I decided instead of writing a third book, why don’t I come up with the stories and actually go and tell them to my friends, live?” Lowe says on the phone.
The show is not a theatrical adaptation of Lowe’s book of the same name. It’s an all-new assortment of tales from the breadth of the 54-yearold actor’s life and career.
“It would be what you would expect the third book to be,” Lowe says. “It’s a funny evening, I think funnier than people are prepared for. And then sneakily emotional at the end.”
That’s not to say that stories he told in his memoirs are off-limits, because there’s a lot of good material in there, too. Take his duet with Snow White at the 1989 Academy Awards in an illconceived opening number modeled after San Francisco’s “Beach Blanket Babylon.”
“In one of the books I talk about singing with Snow White being the career debacle of a lifetime, but what I realized is the more excruciating detail I go into, the funnier it is,” Lowe says. “So that’s always what I finish with, because it is a barn burner. I’m probably the only idiot that would go
on a national tour and end my performance with an excruciating long story that makes me look like one of the great nincompoops of all time.”
Lowe has been tweaking the show since it premiered in Mesa, Arizona, in May of last year as a one-shot event to test the waters.
“You get a sense of an audience, of what they’re responding to, and if they’re really responding to something you can go deeper into it,” he says. “Or if they’re not responding, you can bail on it. And the fun of really being light on your feet comes with the Q&A every night at the end, when I use questions as a leaping-off point to stories that I may have never told anybody ever.”
Because Lowe always has to schedule around his acting and directing
work, he doesn’t tour with this show so much as do an occasional performance here and there. In fact, the San Jose date was originally scheduled for June but was postponed till now.
“I can’t tell if it’s the good news or the bad news that my tour, such as it is, has been so broken up,” Lowe says. “I’ve been off the road doing this until I’m coming to you, so I’m going to have opening night jitters. And when you’ve done a bunch of them, you’re in the groove, but then you can get bored.”
One of the main reasons Lowe does the show is the opportunity it gives to connect with his fans.
“The show and the books to me are confirming and strengthening a bond with people who have supported me since I started in the movie business and the TV business,” he says. “It really is an opportunity for me to say thank you, because I’m unbelievably cognizant and grateful of that bond. I really do feel like I’m sitting around a campfire talking to friends about my life.”