A Stutter on Stage Brings Actor a Revelation


For years, actor Taro Alexander tried to hide his stutter, but an unplanned pause changed his life.


It's Friday morning once again, which means it's time for StoryCorps. This project records people across the country talking with each other about their lives.

My name is Taro Alexander and I've stuttered since I was 5 years old. Taro Alexander's story was recorded in New York City.

I didn't know any one else who stuttered till I was in my mid-20s. And I just felt alone and I tried to hide it and was pretty successful at kind of fooling people. There are a lot of tricks that you can use. Where you can avoid certain sounds or certain words that give you problems. You know you can speak in an accent or try yawning or - the easiest one, obviously, is to not talk. When I was in high school, I went to a high school for the performing arts and on stage I was mostly fluent which actually can be a pretty common thing for actors who stutter. So that was great for my confidence.

But when I was about 26, I was going to play in Denver, Colorado. And at the very end of the play I had this monologue and I had a block on a line, which up to the point in my professional career, I've never really stuttered on stage. It was probably like a one-second block which can sound like a pause. So if you didn't know that I stuttered, you probably would have no idea that that happened. But for me it wasn't a choice and it freaked me out. And after the show I thought I was going to be fired by the stage manager and I got to that line the second night and I stuttered again and it was a little bit worse.

I needed to talk to somebody about it but I didn't know, I mean who am I going to talk to. I don't talk about this with anybody. So there was this guy named Carl who's the other actor in the scene with me. I went down to his apartment. I said, this is going to be really strange. I know we don't know each other well, but there's something that I want to tell you. I'm a person who stutters, and he said, oh really? S....o am I....nothing what? No, you are not, like I don't ever hear you stutter, what are you talking about? He was like, well, I don't ever hear you stutter, so, and I was like, really? Like, and he's, like, yeah, as a kid I had a really bad stutter. And I worked really hard on it. And most of the time I don't stutter during now and then, I will. And that really was the beginning of, wow, you know there're a lot of us out there. Which just kinda chilled me out about it. I think a lot of people who stutter including myself, go through such a hard time in their life with it. But who would I be if I didn't stutter? I would be a completely different person.

That's Taro Alexander speaking at StoryCorps in New York City. He eventually founded a theatre company for young people who stutter, it celebrates 6 years of work tomorrow. All StoryCorps interviews are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and you can subscribe to a StoryCorps podcast at npr.org.