Alex Dezen: On the Road With Neil Simon’s ‘Lost in Yonkers’

“Name a city and I think I have been there,” quips Alex Dezen, who plays the wisecracking Arty in Neil Simon’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize award-winning play “Lost in Yonkers,” currently at the James A. Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood.

The 14-year-old New York native, who says he is a “smart aleck” just like Arty, has been touring the country in the comedy-drama for the past nine months. “I went to places like Scranton, West Point, Miami, Atlanta,” Dezen says.

Dezen admits he’s been so many places, sometimes he’s even forgotten where he was. “I have done that a lot of times,” Dezen says. “When we were in Louisville, we were just loading out (the set) and we were leaving to go to the next city. I woke up (that) morning and I had no idea where I was.”

But Dezen, who also toured in “Les Miserables,” wouldn’t trade his life on the road for anything. “I get tutored every day and it is not as hard as school,” says Dezen, who enters the ninth grade in September. “It’s fun to get up at 12 every afternoon and not have to worry about going to school or doing homework. I can do anything all day long. I just have to go to the theater at night and get paid every Thursday.”

When he’s not acting, though, one can usually find Dezen behind the camera. Last year, he became interested in photography after his older sister brought home a camera. “I fooled around with it and I took pretty good pictures,” he says. “So I started to take more pictures.”

Dezen’s become so enthralled with photography, he says he would rather be a photographer than an actor. “In my opinion, (photographers) are not so much under a microscope,” he says. “When you are an actor, everybody watches you do it and everybody has their own opinion. But when you are taking a picture, you can totally relax and take whatever picture you want. Nobody can judge you.”