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In 1994 Josh Kornbluth got hit with what was, for him, an enormous tax bill. He suddenly owed Uncle Sam and the state of California a combined total of $27,000. 

For most of his life as an actor/monologist, Kornbluth has been happy to scrape by. He doesn’t drive, his rent was modest and his needs were met by his theatrical successes. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, those same successes sparked interest in Hollywood, and several of his monologues were “optioned.” Dreaming of future Hollywood riches, he spent the original option payments paying off debts he’d accumulated as an actor, without taking into consideration his new tax liabilities. 

But the sad reality is that, for every movie made, hundreds if not thousands more are optioned, and Kornbluth was soon left with nothing more than an expired option and a huge tax bill. 

At the same time his then-girlfriend, a Vallejo public school teacher, was about to become his wife and she wasn’t eager to shoulder Kornbluth’s staggering debt. Scrambling desperately to wriggle out of his tax liabilities before his wife-to-be scrambled out of their relationship, Kornbluth engaged a tax attorney who turned his $27,000 tax liability into a $80,000 tax and legal-fees liability. 

Does this sound like a likely premise for an engaging and funny monologue on the responsibilities of citizenship, family and paying your fair share for the world we live in? 

As unlikely as it sounds, this is exactly what has happened as Josh Kornbluth’s new monologue, “Love and Taxes,” comes from a highly successful world premiere run at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco to Berkeley Rep starting Wednesday, Aug. 20 for a limited four-week engagement. 

Produced by Jonathan Reinis and The Z Space Studio, this is Berkeley-based Reinis’ first foray into theater in Berkeley after a 22-year run in San Francisco, most recently at Theater On The Square. Reinis has been quoted in the press as hoping to purchase the too long closed UC Theater on University Avenue as a new theatrical venue in the East Bay. 

Kornbluth, now 44 and married and living in Berkeley with his wife and their six-year-old son, is eager to perform at Berkeley Rep. For one, he can walk there. Also, although he grew up in New York, Berkeley is a Kornbluth kind of town. 

“The Bay Area and specifically Berkeley, where I live is... and I hate to use a word that is so very un-New York, but it’s nurturing. I just really love it here. I’m very proud to be here and I feel blessed. When I was doing my first piece, ‘Josh Kornbluth’s Daily World,’ about growing up communist, I came to La Val’s Subterranean Northside. But I had laryngitis—the only time I’ve ever had it in my life—and there were a bunch of these revolutionary folk songs in it but I couldn’t sing. So I came in and I told them — though it was obvious because I couldn’t even inflect — ‘But I’m sure you’ll know the songs, so when I get to them, sing it.’ And absolutely every song, they sang. It was really great. It was a really great experience.” 

When he first moved to Berkeley in 1997, Kornbluth was enchanted to see signs posted on the public schools thanking the citizens of Berkeley for their support. 

“That’s a big part of ‘Love and Taxes,’ the idea of public and what is important about things that are public. So the piece starts from that experience but what’s really going on in this is how do I become a citizen? Understanding the dawning of my consciousness as a proud taxpayer.  

“I want to pay taxes. Taxes are really important. Not only that but taxes are under attack, and they have been under attack both here in California and nationally, especially for the last few decades. And very much now under the current presidential administration. So, I was angry about it. They want to destroy everything that I care about. But how ironic and contradictory. I’m laissez faire about how I owe all this money in taxes and I haven’t paid it. And then there are also questions about, ‘are the taxes fair?’ 

“Is it fair that I owed that much when a rich person can hire a fancy lawyer and get out of it? So [I used] the story as an opportunity to bring people along on my journey to learn about taxes and also to learn about my relationship to ‘The System.’ I go from the way I was raised: ‘The Man is behind all the bad stuff. The Man is evil. The System is bad.’ And then my character starts to wonder: ‘Who is The Man? Who are They? And if it’s only They, it doesn’t seem like I have anything to do with it. But if it’s Us, it’s our problem and it’s our responsibility.’ Which is something that started to occur to me very strongly as our son was gestating.  

“To me this is a coming of age story. To me, this idea is, if we’re just talking and complaining and kvetching and bitching, we’re not actually changing anything. We’re not actually taking responsibility for anything. In fact, we’re washing our hands of it. And that’s not what it’s about. That’s not what my dad did. He was active.”