'Neon Man' play earns creator a Groucho Award
Roanoke Times
Miranda Puckett
January 19. 2006

Slash Coleman's play about his relationship with his
best friend Mark Jamison, "The Neon Man and Me,"
has come a long way since it premiered at Mill
Mountain Theatre in October.
Since then, it has won a Groucho Award for Best One
Man Play.

The Groucho Award is given by the Comedy Sportz
Improv Theater. It honors the Richmond playwrights
and comedians who have graced the theater's stage
each year.

The Groucho was quite a surprise for Coleman. At
the black-tie awards ceremony, he had decided to
leave early, but as he was saying his goodbyes,
"Everyone was telling me, 'You can't leave,' "
Coleman said last week.

Soon afterward, he was presented with the award.
Coleman met Jamison -- known to many Roanokers
as "The Neon Man" -- while a student at Radford
University in the late 1980s. Jamison, a Franklin
County native, opened a neon shop in Roanoke in
1999. His artwork ranges from Roanoke landmarks
such as the Grandin Theatre to Burger Kings.
Businesses throughout downtown Roanoke are
adorned with glass tubes he bent and filled with neon
and argon gases and pigments.

Jamison died in January 2004 when he brushed a
high-voltage power line while installing a sign at a
West Salem restaurant. He was 35.

"The Neon Man and Me" has raised more than $5,000
in funds for nonprofit groups, as well as benefiting an
education fund for Mark Jamison Thomas, the son
Mark Jamison never knew.
Jamison's girlfriend, Lisa Thomas, found out that she
was pregnant the week after Jamison's death.
Coleman has plans to take the play on the road. He is
scheduled to perform in New York and San Francisco,
and hopes to take the show off-Broadway.
He would also like to have the show return to the Star
City, in perhaps a year or so.
Best One Man Show of
2005 awarded by Comedy
Sportz Improv Theater
© Slash Coleman 2008