Twenty-four-year-old actor and writer Josh Lefkowitz is sleeping on a couch in Columbia Heights these days, but he’s hardly down on his luck. After leaving D.C. last year in search of performance opportunities in New York, he’s found himself in the back warm embrace of the District, this time in the form of the Capital Fringe Festival, where he is performing his first monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century.

The performance is overtly an homage to Lefkowitz’s personal hero, Spalding Gray, where the young man recounts attempts to find his way as a struggling artist in the post-college world. We know, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it’s pretty damn funny. Lefkowitz, a la Gray, delivers his monologue sitting behind a plain desk, relying on his gift for deadpan comic delivery and charmingly astute observations about growing up. Whether he’s being sucked in to “The Greatest Game Ever According to Time Magazine,” or asking himself the really important questions like “What Would Geena Davis Do?”, Lefkowitz demonstrates his hapless old soul-nature while winning genuine laughs. His final performance as part of the Fringe Festival is tonight at 7:45 p.m., and you can purchase tickets here.

I know from your performance that you moved to D.C. from Michigan to take a role in a play. How long did you stay, and what prompted you to stay after that first play was over?

I moved to D.C. in Fall 2003 and I stayed until about Fall 2005, so basically 2 years. The reason I stayed in D.C. beyond that intial play was because of all the acting work that was (potentially) available. It seemed to me a burdgeoning and prosperous theater scene, even if I didn’t know how to spell the word ‘burdgeoning’, which I didn’t, and still don’t. It took a bit of time but eventually I got plugged in and started getting work as an actor, and work begets work, so I stayed.