[NoHo Arts District, CA] – Best of Fest 2026 winner Lessons Learned: The Time of My Life returns for a limited engagement at Whitefire Theatre, September 17 – October 8.
Read the NoHo Arts Lessons Learned: The Time of My Life review>>
I was lucky enough to see The Time of My Life back in February when it played during the Whitefire Theatre’s celebrated Solofest (the second largest solo festival in the country). The show was a standout, even amongst the 60 or so other wonderful shows. Now it is back at The Whitefire for a series of performances, and I am certain it will thrill the latest audience as much as it did me!!
Since I had already seen the show and written a review, I thought it might be apropos to ask its creator and performer, Denise Fennell, how she created such a masterpiece and why.
Why did you decide to write a solo show?
I’m not sure I decided to write Lessons Learned as much as it found me.
About 10 years ago I was performing in Houston and after a show a man came up to me and said, “You should have your own show.” Then he handed me a few printed pages filled with funny little sayings and observations. They were hilarious, but there was also so much heart in them. Something about that encounter stayed with me, so I kept those pages.
Years later, after my father passed away, I was going through his desk and found them again. I told my husband Rick the whole story and he wrote a play about it.
I mean, even saying that out loud is kind of wild to me.
That became Lessons Learned. It started with those little pieces of paper, but it grew into a show about the things we are taught, the things we actually learn, and the lessons we seem to have to learn over and over again.
This is a very personal show. Did you give yourself any guardrails, or was everything on the table?
Pretty much everything was on the table, but it still had to fit into the story.
Rick has this storyboard of ideas, moments and memories, and it’s actually amazing to watch how he works with all of it. Some things make it into the show, and some things, even if they’re great, get put into a folder for another time.
For me, personal doesn’t automatically mean interesting. The story has to connect. I can tell you about my parents, my childhood, my marriage, becoming a stepmother, getting older, or loading a dishwasher, but somewhere in there the audience has to go, “Oh my God, me too.”
That’s what I love.
There are things in the show that are very personal, but the night itself is really fun. I want people laughing, talking back, having a drink, remembering their own stories and just having a great time. If they leave thinking about a few things too, even better.
I know you wrote this with your husband. What was that experience like? I have worked creatively with my husband too, and it’s not all plain sailing!
Oh, there can absolutely be drama. We’re theatre people. Of course there’s drama!
But Rick and I actually work really well together creatively. I love performing and connecting with an audience. Rick is an incredible writer and he understands structure in a way I really admire.
He also knows me so well that sometimes he can take something I casually tell him and find the actual story inside it.
That happened with The Bride, which was the first show he wrote for me, and it happened again with Lessons Learned.
We also met doing Tony and Tina’s Wedding. The first time Rick and I ever met, we actually played Tony and Tina, so technically the first thing we ever did together was get married. Maybe we were destined to make theatre together.
And yes, sometimes we disagree. But that is part of the process too. One of the lessons I’m still learning is how you handle those moments. What choice did I make? Could I have handled it differently? Am I repeating something I thought I already learned?
Which, when you think about it, is basically the whole show.
What did you get out of the whole experience, not just the performances?
A much deeper respect for the writing.
I’ve always loved performing. I love an audience. I love that every night is different and that something can happen in a room that will never happen exactly that way again.
But developing Lessons Learned has made me really appreciate how much work goes into making all those stories connect.
That has been one of the great things about doing the show here in Los Angeles and being part of SoloFest at the Whitefire. This is the first piece I’ve really put up in Los Angeles, and the experience has been incredible. There is so much wonderful theatre being developed here.
To be able to put the show in front of your creative community, listen to what lands, feel where the audience comes with you, and then keep working on the piece is such a gift.
And I really love what I do. Getting to do it with people I love makes it even better.
When you document your life like this, were there moments when you thought, “Did that really happen to me?” Or even, “How did I survive?”
Constantly!
Especially growing up when I did.
I’m a Gen X latchkey kid. We rode banana seat bikes without helmets, disappeared for hours, played on playground equipment that could probably be classified as a weapon today and somehow everybody just expected us to come home for dinner.
Then you start looking at your parents, your marriage, becoming a stepparent, getting older and all these different versions of yourself and you think, “Wait. How did I get from there to here?”
Some of the funniest moments in Lessons Learned are completely true. And some of the moments that seemed completely insignificant when they happened are the ones that end up teaching you the most.
That is really what fascinates me.
Do you have any advice for burgeoning writers or performers?
Get it in front of people.
You can work on something forever by yourself, but there is nothing like an audience to teach you what you have.
Listen to them. Not because you have to change everything based on what somebody says, but because an audience will tell you when they are with you. You can feel it.
And don’t be afraid to keep working on it.
Lessons Learned keeps teaching me things every time I perform it. A line changes. A connection becomes clearer. Something suddenly lands in a completely different way.
That’s the fun of live theatre. It’s alive.
What was the best and the worst thing about this experience?
The best thing is the connection.
There is a moment in the show when I can feel the audience begin to realize that all these seemingly separate stories are connected. I love that moment. And then people start connecting the stories to their own lives.
That’s everything to me.
The hardest part is probably being this exposed. In Late Nite Catechism, I can put on the habit and I’m Sister. In The Bride, there is a character and a wedding dress.
In Lessons Learned, it’s just me.
That can be terrifying.
But it has also turned out to be incredibly freeing.
Would you do it all again?
The show? Absolutely.
Some of the lessons? Maybe not all of them.
I think that’s really the point of Lessons Learned. You look back and realize some things made perfect sense at the time, some absolutely did not, and somehow all of it becomes part of the story.
I’m still learning as I go. Honestly, most days I’m just flying by the seat of my leather pants.
We have two performances left at the Whitefire, and I’d love for people to come have a drink, laugh with us, recognize a few of their own lessons along the way, and just have a really fun night.
Thank you, Denise, and we know you will have a ball revisiting this brilliant and hilarious show full of insight and hope and an awful lot of incredible laughs.…and don’t we all need that right now!!!
Tickets:
https://whitefire.stagey.net/projects/12787?tab=details
Where:
The Whitefire Theatre,
When:
September 17 – October 8
Learn More at denisefennell.net