If anyone had ever told me... (first in a series)

... when I was in elementary school that I would one day end up in theatre, and even on stage, acting, I would have thought they were crazy.  For that matter, I'm pretty sure my family was shocked when they saw me on stage and later building a career in the performing arts.  My ultimate path took me off the stage and behind the scenes, but early on, I actually considered a career as an actor.

 This is the first of what I hope will be a short series of posts, all about aspects of my life that have turned out in ways I wouldn't have expected at an earlier time.  I'm using it as a tool to get my writing revved up again, as that's something I really want to do this year.  And while this blog has been sputtering for a while, it seems like it might be a good tool in my toolbox to get that going.

So, here goes...

How the heck did I end up on stage?

To start with, I should explain I was a VERY shy kid.  To this day, I'm pretty much the classic introvert, preferring my own company and MAYBE the company of a few select people, preferably no more than two or three at a time.   In elementary school, I was the sensitive kid, the kid who loved to read, didn't really do sports, and was quiet and shy, to the extent that one teacher seriously suggested my mom take me to see a child psychologist.  Thankfully, mom chose to ignore that, and other teachers and students saw aspects of me that helped bring me out of my shell a bit.  Still, I was definitely in the "quiet" category at the start of junior high.

Then one day I got a phone call from my best friend Peter, saying "the drama club is covering flats tomorrow, and I'm going to help, do you want to come?"  I had NO idea what any of that meant... I didn't even know there was such a thing as drama club at that point, let alone what "covering flats" was, but it was my best buddy asking, so I went.  I quickly learned what a flat was and a lot more about putting on a show, and found it fascinating and fun.

I was happily discovering the whole new world of the "backstage" side of theatre when somehow or other, I ended up auditioning for a part in a play.  I think the faculty advisor (oddly enough, a science teacher) talked me into trying out.  Much to my surprise, I ended up landing a pretty big role, as a detective in a murder mystery who turns out to have been the killer.  After that, I tried out again, for yet another "murder mystery" which was more of a farce, where yet again, I was the killer.  This time though, the victim was a mouse and my character did away with him with a mouse trap and piece of cheese.  Hey, it was junior high, we were NOT doing the classics by any means.

Now, how did a shy kid find the gumption to step onto a stage in front of an audience and not just utterly freeze in terror?  It's a funny thing, and I know a lot of actors over the years have said this, but if you succeed in getting yourself into the head of the character, and the reality of what is happening on stage, the audience loses its threatening nature, and you don't really worry about them.  And luckily, our drama club leader was very good at teaching us about being in character and other acting skills, for which I will always be grateful.  It really was a major step in my life, giving me confidence I never had before.

Starting high school, I discovered that not only was there a drama club, but a series of three drama classes you could take, and I took all three years.  Starting out with small roles, I worked my way into playing a few lead roles in both comedies and dramas over the three years of high school, including the hysterically funny "The Mouse that Roared" and the far-too-weighty-for-high-school-actors "The Heiress", in which I struggled to portray an overbearing father who was slowly but surely dying of consumption or something like that.  In the midst of all that, I also got a chance to branch out into community theatre, in the role of Prince John in The Lion in Winter.  This did a lot to improve my confidence, acting alongside adult actors with a lot more experience than I had.

All this time I had also continued my work back stage, primarily in the set construction side of things.  I wasn't ever really a "wood shop" kind of kid, and my dad wasn't one of those classic fathers who built things in the garage all the time.  Now I found myself wielding saws and hammers and learning an awful lot about how to make something realistic looking from wood, fabric, and paint.  I honestly found it as rewarding and fun as acting was, and in some ways a lot less stressful.

When it was time to pick a college, I focused on schools with good theatre programs, and thanks to an academic scholarship, I landed at Towson State University in the fall of 1979.  For the first year or so, I worked a double track of acting and technical theatre, and found both really fun and challenging.  Over time, however, I began to think about the reality of just how many people end up chasing a very small number of paid acting jobs, versus the number of people needed to do all the rest of the work.  I had already started slowly leaning toward the backstage side of things when the head of that program nudged me, telling me I really needed to decide which path I wanted, if I was going to succeed at either.

As much as I enjoyed acting, I knew I was good, but not exceptional, in a field where exceptional people often end up waiting tables to make ends meet.  I had also discovered I truly loved lighting design, and the art and science of technical direction was becoming more and more fascinating to me.  So I made my choice and through the end of college, I followed that path.

Graduation came, and I already had a job at a community college, running the backstage operations for visiting performance groups and helping out with the theatre department shows.  This was followed by enrolling in an MFA program in Technical Design and Production at the Yale School of Drama, where I really learned what it took to make a show happen from the backstage side of things.  It was an exhausting and exhaustive three years, leaving me with knowledge, memories and friendships I will always cherish.  If some people look back on high school as the "best" part of their lives, I would have to pick the three years in New Haven as, if not best, the most pivotal time of my life.

After grad school, I held a number of jobs as a technical director at both professional and academic institutions. I taught for about a dozen years, passing on  my knowledge and I hope my love of the work onto another generation.  I worked in tiny theatres, huge theatres, small state colleges, and prestigious private universities widely known for their theatre training programs. I helped mount so many shows I've long ago lost count, and there are a lot of them I look back proudly on.

On the other hand, the hours and generally lousy pay, coupled with the stress, ultimately got to me,  driving me out of the field, but that's a story for another day.

And it all started with a random, chance phone call from a friend.