The key to James Lecesne’s Sunday, or any day, is chanting. Mr. Lecesne, an actor, writer and activist, has been doing it twice a day since 1993, and he attributes “a certain level of happiness and determination no matter what’s going on” to it. Soon after he started, in an attempt to “make a difference” during the AIDS crisis, he said, he was offered a job at a nonprofit. This led to his meeting the director Mike Nichols, who was instrumental in producing his first show. “I got on track,” Mr. Lecesne said. He is the founder of the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention network for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, and the star of a one-man play, “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” which he wrote. Mr. Lecesne, 60, who is “between dogs,” lives alone in a fourth-floor walk-up in the West Village of Manhattan.  NESPRESSO AND THE NEWS I can’t sleep later than 8. It seems wrong. I have one of those little Nespresso machines. I’ll have a cappuccino kind of thing. I’ll sort of check the news. The more personal the story is, the more access I have to it. Like this morning, the refugees. I’m totally obsessed. There was an interview with this woman from Syria. She and her three kids and husband left Syria, and they’d been moving around for four years. It was the personal aspect of her story. And her remarkable good will toward humanity in the face of very bad treatment everywhere she went.  BUDDHA’S DELIGHT Chanting. I do it every day. Sometimes people come over, and sometimes I do it by myself. When people come over we generally chant for an hour, and then we talk a little bit amongst ourselves about what’s going on in our lives and how we’re using the process to make our lives work better.  EGGS AND GREEN THINGS I’ll go to one of two places in my neighborhood. There is Morandi, down on my corner. I’ll usually order uova in camicia, poached eggs over, believe it or not, mushrooms, peas, spinach and artichokes — delicious. The other place is Bluestone Lane. Everyone who works there is Australian. They have this incredible thing — avocado smash. Delicious Balthazar bread with avocado and a poached egg on top.  TWO-WHEEL COMMUTE Then I have to go to the theater. I have my own bike. It’s an old beater, an old Schwinn that nobody really wants except for me, and I love it. I go up the West Side Highway path. Oh, my God, I love my life so much. And that ride is so much a part of it. I feel like I live in the country.  AN ACTOR PREPARES I love the time before. The whole process of opening the house and listening to the people on the intercom, and listening to the excitement build. My dressing room is very, let’s just say, porous. There’s no door. So we’re all just talking and stuff. But at a certain point, I’ll go backstage. I’ll listen to the audience. The audience is really the other actor in a piece like this. The more information I have about the audience, the easier it is to be in tune with them.  POST-SHOW It’s been such a joy to come out in the lobby and talk to people. Ian McKellen came to see the show. And Armistead Maupin. My absolute heroes, by the way. Armistead said, “You can’t just let people wander out onto 43rd Street after this show; we need a moment to talk about how we feel.”  RECHARGING Usually I’ll either go to a friend’s house for dinner or go to a movie. I recently saw the Amy Winehouse documentary. It’s amazing. I didn’t understand what a genius she was. It’s such a cautionary tale about the world we live in and how we value other human beings, or don’t. I’ll do an evening chant. It’s sort of like, you know how your iPhone runs out of batteries around 6? It’s like that, like recharging.  BOOKS IN BED There are two things really grabbing me. This new book by Bill Clegg, “Did You Ever Have a Family.” A beautiful, beautiful novel. It’s the story of a family but told from different points of view in the town. A modern-day “Our Town.” I’m completely fascinated by “Where We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the last book he wrote. It’s so prescient.  #SundayRoutine readers can follow James Lecesne on Twitter on Sunday @JLecesne.  A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2015, on page MB2 of the New York edition with the headline: At One With the Audience and the Universe. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
For actor, writer and activist James Lecesne, Sundays are for chanting, riding his Schwinn along the Hudson River and performing in his one-man show.