“Lyme Disease: The Musical” Writer/Producer Ellen Thompson Interviewed by CanvasRebel Magazine
“Lyme Disease: The Musical” Writer/Producer Ellen Thompson was interviewed by CanvasRebel Magazine about about moving to Los Angeles twenty years ago, her Lyme disease-related projects, and quitting acting to become a paralegal. Check out the CanvasRebel article here, or read the reprint below.
Meet Ellen Thompson
December 7, 2023
We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ellen Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ellen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Twenty years ago, my husband Dave and I were living in a small apartment in New York City with a mini fridge. We wanted to get a dog and eventually buy a house, and those things seemed impossible in New York. We both worked in the entertainment industry, so the only other place to go was Los Angeles. Having never been there, we decided we were moving whether we liked it or not. We had a place to live lined up but no jobs, and we only knew a handful of people in L.A. We quit our jobs, and on a dark and stormy summer night, we packed our belongings and our cat into our newly acquired car and started driving. We were gifted two elderly cars from our parents, and two friends drove the other car.
When we arrived in L.A., we moved in with my former roommate, who was our good friend. When we parked near her apartment, I stepped out of the car and directly into dog poop. In a further “welcome to Los Angeles,” we promptly got two parking tickets for not having front license plates. Our cars, which were from Pennsylvania, didn’t even have holes in the front bumpers to install license plates.
Things definitely got better from there! Dave and I were lucky to both find jobs within a few months. We rented an apartment in Hollywood that felt like a palace compared to our place in New York. It had a full size fridge! A balcony instead of a potentially unsafe fire escape! A gas fireplace we never used! Rent kept going up, so we rented a condo in the Valley and got our first dog. In 2010, the condo went into foreclosure, and we were able to buy it in a short sale, meaning the bank took a loss, and we got a deal. Eleven years later, we sold the condo and bought a house.
Moving to L.A. allowed us to achieve our dream of having a dog and owning a home, so it was definitely the right decision. L.A. has been very kind to us, and we’ve made many incredible friends here. I moved here whether I liked it or not, and I ended up loving it. I have no regrets.
Ellen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
As you might guess, it’s been a strange road that led me to be a musical playwright, paralegal, and Lyme disease activist. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, and I started acting in community theater when I was in seventh grade in central Pennsylvania. I went to college in New York and studied acting, and then I lived the tough life of an actor for 20 years there and then here in L.A., acting mostly in commercials and independent films. A career highlight was playing a meth-addicted murderer on a true crime reenactment TV show. I got to kill a guy and bury his body!
Then, in 2014, I got sick with Lyme disease, which is a bacterial infection usually spread by a tick bite that causes debilitating pain, fatigue, and dozens of other symptoms. I saw six doctors over 10 months before I got a diagnosis, and during that time I became completely disabled. I quit acting, but I kept writing. I wrote and produced a music video called “Pay Attention (for Lyme Disease Prevention),” which won four awards.Then I slowly wrote the book and lyrics for “Lyme Disease: The Musical” based on my experience, and last summer, after years of treatment, I was well enough to produce the show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Becoming disabled by a progressive disease and fighting your way back to health is pretty heavy stuff, so I used music and humor to cope. Audiences really responded to the weirdness of “Lyme Disease: The Musical,” which has a tick narrator and dancing bacteria. With everything I write, I try to work in social commentary, in this case it’s sexism and ignorance in medicine. The script for “Lyme Disease: The Musical” was a finalist in the 2023 ScreenCraft Stage Play Writing Competition, and the 2022 Hollywood Fringe Festival production was nominated for two Robby Awards and five Broadway World Los Angeles Awards, including Best New Play or Musical. A video of the production will be streaming soon, and the cast album, Lyme Disease: The Musical (Original Cast Recording), is available on most music streaming platforms. I just started writing my next musical. I also work as a paralegal and volunteer for Writegirl, where I mentor a 14-year-old girl in creative writing, and the Center for Lyme Action, where I lobby for more federal funding for Lyme disease research.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
After 20 years living the life of an actor, I got too sick with Lyme disease to continue. During treatment, I learned I would need to really take care of myself for the rest of my life if I wanted to get well and stay well. That included cutting out unnecessary stress, and being an actor is incredibly stressful. You’re supposed to find a “survival job” that allows you to leave work and take time off whenever you need it for auditions and jobs. Your “survival job” needs to pay for your life and your acting classes and your headshots. And you need a nice wardrobe and good hair and good teeth and clear skin, and you need to look like your headshot! Have you been networking this whole time? Because you should always be networking! It’s exhausting for a healthy person, and I was completely debilitated by pain and fatigue. My knees and shins hurt so badly, I could barely walk.
After my first year of treatment, my health was improving, and I started thinking about what I wanted to do instead of acting. I knew I wanted a career that was stable, and that I wanted to help people. I’ve always been obsessed with justice, and during the 2017 ”Muslim Travel Ban,” I was inspired by the attorneys and paralegals who rushed to airports to help people who were unjustly detained. I enrolled in the paralegal program at UCLA Extension and graduated first in my class a year later. I’m very lucky that Lyme didn’t affect me cognitively.
My Lyme disease has been in remission for over a year now, and I’m freelancing as a paralegal. I work from home and set my own hours, so I’m able to take breaks and rest when I need to. I’m not grateful for the experience of having Lyme disease, but I am glad it forced me into a less stressful career. I’m not sure if anything else could have turned me into the odd combination of things I am now–a paralegal, playwright, songwriter, theater producer, record producer, and Lyme disease activist.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding aspect of being a creative person is getting to work with other creative people, who are usually a good time. When you’re working on a project and everyone is doing what they love, it’s a magical feeling. I got to work with and learn from incredibly talented people when I was a teenager acting in community and regional theater, as a student at NYU, and as a student and performer at Second City Hollywood. More recently, I worked with, learned from, and had a lot of fun with Emmy-winning songwriter Hughie Stone Fish, who composed and produced the music for “Pay Attention (For Lyme Disease Prevention)” and “Lyme Disease: The Musical,” and Kev Luu, who produced the music for “Lyme Disease: The Musical” with Hughie and recorded and mixed the cast album.
My best friend since childhood, Robert Glen Decker (who acted in community theater with me back in the day) directed “Lyme Disease: The Musical” and was nominated for a Broadway World Los Angeles Award for Best Direction of a Musical. My friend and former improv teammate Todd Risenmay played the Tick in “Lyme Disease: The Musical” and was nominated for a Broadway World Los Angeles Award for Best Performer in a Musical. I also worked with my very talented actor friends Taylor Murphy-Sinclair and Brendan McCay on both the music video and “Lyme Disease: The Musical.” I can’t imagine not being a creative person. There are so many amazing people I wouldn’t have gotten to know, and so much I wouldn’t have learned from them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ellen-thompson.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ellenfabulous
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ellenthompsonofficial
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ellenthompsonnemetz
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/ellenfabulous
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/ellenfabulous
- Other: www.lymediseasethemusical.com
Image Credits
Matthew Hsu, Pearl Amanda Dickson, Charlie Weinmann