In the Kitchen with Chris Sorensen Former actor finds success in writing

Chris Sorensen of Sparta began his theatre career as an actor. After receiving a Masters of Fine Arts in professional acting from Rutgers in 1990, he performed in many New York City productions for over ten years with the Present Company and New York Fringe.

But in the summer of 2001, Sorensen took a fateful step off a commuter bus from New York City to Weehawken that would change his career direction. The bus never stopped while he was exiting causing him to strike the pavement. Temporarily incapacitated, Sorenson moved back to his parent’s home in western Illinois for rehabilitation.

“The bus accident changed the course of my life for the better — I wouldn’t change it. I had always dabbled in writing. When you have a leg in traction you have a lot of time on your hands, so it was a good opportunity to pursue writing,” said Sorensen.

His first play, "A Cripple Creek Christmas Carol" was produced a year after the accident by the Thin Air Theatre Company in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Spending many family vacations there, and later doing summer stock theatre, he always had a connection to Colorado

“This particular theatre likes to adapt Halloween and Christmas stories in the forms of dramas and horrors,” he said. “I have written nine more, including "Angel of the Christmas Mine," "Dr. Jekyll’s Medicine Show," "Werewolves of Poverty Gulch," and "The Vampire of Cripple Creek." Thin Air usually produces one of my new plays along with one old each season — many have music using songs culled from the public domain.”

Recently he sold a comedy/horror screenplay that has been optioned by a film company. “They are putting the financing together and finding a director to produce it. The story is about leech people that attack the ‘redneck’ bar on the Mississippi River,” laughs Sorensen.

Which begs the question where does he come up with his ideas? “Sometimes I see something. I saw a story on Yahoo about a tornado of bees, so I get an idea and start playing with it — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” Presently, he is writing a kid’s sci-fi movie set in his backyard of Lake Mohawk, but Sorensen is keeping the lid on that one: “I can’t say much more.”

Because of his resonant voice and acting experience, Sorensen is also a successful audio book narrator working for Recorded Books LLC recording children and young adult titles. A 450-page book will be about 18.5 hours on a CD or internet recording. Young adult titles are about six hours long; for every recorded hour, it takes Sorensen about 90 minutes.

“I just built a studio in my basement where I can record — this seems to be the trend. I can record from home and just send it in,” he says.

On his off-time, he enjoys taking his trailer and looking for merchandise for his wife’s store Shelter Vintage in Lake Mohawk. He scours flea markets, junk shops and weekend garage sales. “I used to get props for plays I was in — this is very similar. I like being out in the field tooling around in the junk pile.”

Sorensen enjoys all of his creative projects and has come to prefer the writing over acting: “Everyone has an opinion when you are on stage, but when you are writing you don’t have someone else looking over your shoulder. I like getting paid for doing things when I was a kid — my Mom said I used to walk around with a big stack of paper writing stories and stapling them together.”