A few rounds with the playwright

Grant Kramer’s performance as a welterweight boxer in “Shadowboxing” appeared so authentic that many critics and other viewers of the solo show, which closed last weekend at the Hudson Theatre, assumed the script was autobiographical -- especially because the program and press releases indicated that Kramer had been a prizefighter.

Kramer, however, now says that “the play is not at all autobiographical.” He was never a professional boxer, although he acknowledges that he has been in fights in “little holes in the wall” and occasionally received money for them. Elements of the play reflect “the life experiences of people I knew,” he says, but “I’d like to believe I’m a better writer than I am a fighter.”

Indeed, he is hoping for a second round of “Shadowboxing” at a theater in the San Fernando Valley. He also says that before he began fielding questions about whether the play is autobiographical, “I couldn’t even pronounce ‘autobiographical.’ ”

-- Don Shirley