For Joe Torsella, the Play’s the Thing

Joe Torsella in rehearsals for Declaration / Photograph by DLW Photography NYC

The question is pretty obvious: How is it that Joe Torsella — founding CEO of the National Constitution Center, onetime representative to the U.N., former Pennsylvania state treasurer — is now, at age 62, reinventing himself as an actor?

“Well, I lost,” Torsella says, sitting one evening inside the White Dog Cafe with his lifelong friend, and sometime co-conspirator, Philly Fringe founder Nick Stuccio. Actually, “lost” doesn’t quite capture it. Six years ago, in his bid for re-election as state treasurer, Torsella was upset by Republican Stacy Garrity. His once hot political career? It was suddenly not so hot.

But electoral defeat is only one reason for the emergence of Torsella 2.0. The fuller version of the story is that working in the theater is what, years ago, a teenage Torsella saw as his life’s calling.

“But then I sort of took this sharp turn,” he says. “And part of me wondered, in my sixth decade, why?”

Stuccio interjects. “Yeah, why did you abandon it? Because it was like, ‘I’m going to be a director.’ And then all of a sudden, you gave it up.”

Torsella looks at him. “That’s one of the questions I wrote the play to figure out.”

The play, which opens this week, is Declaration, a solo show Torsella not only penned but will perform as part of the this month’s Philly Fringe Festival. Produced by Stuccio (who retired from his longtime role running the Fringe two years ago), the piece focuses on a politician named “Joe” who suffers a defeat, becomes an actor, then looks for meaning in, of all places, the Declaration of Independence.

Torsella and Stuccio have been buddies since they attended the same high school in northeastern Pennsylvania. At the time, Torsella was the theater nerd, one who was already performing with the nearby (and well-regarded) Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. By senior year in high school, he was so smitten with the stage that he was directing his own version of Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor, casting Stuccio, a tennis jock who’d never been onstage before, in the lead role.

Ironically, while that production got Stuccio hooked on performing, within a couple of years Torsella was moving in a different direction, seeing a more civics-oriented version of himself emerge while he was an undergrad at Penn and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. But even as he built a career in public service, his desire to act never fully disappeared. “For years I said to everyone that when I get some time in my life, I would like to get back to that creative theatrical self,” Torsella says.

That moment came after his loss to Garrity. Contemplating what to do next, Torsella had two realizations: that his political career had come at some cost to his family; and that, pushing 60, time was running out to reconnect with that theatrical self. With Stuccio’s encouragement, he began taking acting classes in New York — alongside plenty of twentysomethings, both men note — and eventually completed an intense two-year program at the Esper Studio. Since then Torsella has landed roles in several independent films and with some smaller theater companies outside Philadelphia (including playing the title character in Macbeth at ActorsNET in Bucks County this summer).

Declaration was born of Torsella’s lifelong fascination with America’s founding document, which he memorized as a child and forced his own four kids (now grown) to read aloud every July 4th. As he pondered the Declaration’s relevance in the dark days of the Trump administration, he realized his own notion of public service — which had long fueled his career — was, as he puts it, immature: “When you’re in politics, you delude yourself that the definition of impact is scale and holding office, as opposed to citizenship and meaning.” Ultimately, he continues, this is what Declaration is really about: Responsibility for the country falls on everyone.

Always the producer, Stuccio riffs — half-jokingly, half-not — about his grandiose dreams for the show. “I think after the Philadelphia run, and a long New York run, and an extended national tour, it will inspire a movement,” he says.

“What about the awards?” Torsella deadpans.

“The award will be inauguration,” Stuccio says triumphantly. Indeed, in his fantasy scenario, Declaration becomes such a nationwide sensation that Joe Torsella, Actor, is drafted into once again becoming Joe Torsella, Candidate — and ends up in the White House.

“You should be president,” Stuccio says, turning to his pal of more than 45 years. “And this is the way you’re going to do it.”

Torsella rolls his eyes. He’ll be happy if just one audience member tells him they now think about civic power differently.

Still, he’s clearly grateful to be working with his longtime friend, and for the full-circle path he’s traveled. “I would never have had the courage to do what I’m doing without Nick,” he says. “I would never have had the inspiration to do it without Nick. And I would never — well, I would have had a much more comfortable retirement without Nick.”

Declaration runs at the Arden Theatre from September 10th through 20th.