Today everything is possible, said Alex Lyras after successfully performing his solo play, desperelics, at the Gene Frankel Theater. "It's all out there," he continued, "You just have to go get it."

The play, directed by Robert McCaskill, is a wonderful portrayal of characters Alex depicted from his own experiences. The theater carried the play with full force as a sophisticated older crowd, mixed in with a younger generation of university students, laughed out loud. Meanwhile, the theme, life plans lead to chaos, developed through such lines as "She has all the qualities of a person I look for to cause me pain."

"The fanatic characters are portrayed as running over the very thing they're chasing. The desperation to achieve freezes, if not fossilizes, true inspiration." The diversity of the characters set them apart, but equal enthusiasm ran from one to another, surprising even Alex himself, he said, by having the characters "do their own thing."

The first character, a philosophy professor who thrives on difficult tasks and pedophilia, made the audience feel like they were part of the schooling process. Following a lengthy lecture, a hoodlum drug delivery messenger who thought he was helping those to whom he sells his products emerges. Before the audience has time to catch its breath, a fitness trainer dressed in a gym suit ran out and enthusiastically showed an interested patron around the gym. Later, the audience learns he has a weakness for gambling which helps him run so fast and soon after off the stage completely.

Alex grew up in Scarsdale in a Greek household and had a "terribly functional childhood." He added, "I was over-educated in a good way." Alec attended Bucknell University where he majored in Philosophy and then went to law school for a short time before returning to New York to pursue acting. While his father laid the intellectual foundation for Alex, he inherited his artistic side from his mother Georgia, who has written two cookbooks: "Foods Of Greece" and "Of Course You Can Cook Greek." "My parents were cool in the sense that they let me make my own mistakes."

In New York, Alex studied with Robert McCaskill. The ancients in Greek theatre influenced him, as well as Eric Bogosian and the "certain gravity" of John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe and Kevin Spacey. Meanwhile, he doesn't see such a big shift in is acting career from law school. "The legal process originated in Greece," he explained "With ancient law, you were trying to appeal to emotion. It's a performance."

Alex has participated in 20 plays in New York, including Shakespeare's Henry IV part I in which he played his most memorable role as Hotspur, the passionate guy on the losing team. "Shakespeare teaches you rhythm," he said. Being part of these different productions has allowed him to try different roles and expand his acting palette. "Acting is a beautiful thing. It's you, your mind, your body."

This summer Alex traveled to Greece, visited the Odeon Theatre at the Acropolis, said some lines and heard his echo. He also went to the restored Globe Theatre in Great Britain and said the experience was "magic." Although he was disappointed with Hollywood today, he added, he would still take $20 million to do a blockbuster.

Overall theater is his passion. "I see all these great actors returning to theater which shows a healthy civilization." After surviving the hard work and stress of his solo performance, he said, "Theater is more fun because it happens all at once. Artists have that responsibility. You need to be confident because the work has been put in. Once you're on that stage, once the audience is in the dark and you are in the light, you better have something to say."