All's Well That Ends....

New York

Let's face it. I've been pretty absent from this blog for the past few months. But never more so than in the last six weeks.

There are two reasons: 1. blogger.com literally lost my blog site for a couple of weeks when they were revamping the website; and 2. I have been totally absorbed with the amazing process of preparing to return to the stage after 40 years.

Now, since I'm not a household name, you probably gathered that I wasn't getting parts in New York or even in regional theaters around the country. But I did have the lead in high school plays from 9th grade through graduation. I tried to talk my parents into a theater major. Didn't work very well, though. My mother's response: "Darling, nice girls don't go into theater." And, of course, my father's dream was to have a child who went into medicine. I was the last child, and the other two went a totally different direction: marriage for one; barely passing, then quiting altogether for the other. So, I was the last great hope. Nursing was his thought for me. Actually, he was looking for an MD, but in 1965, I was on the cusp of the women's movement that made medicine, law, business more mainstream.

Off I went to the College of Saint Teresa. ( I couldn't make that up! ), a small Catholic women's college in a sleepy Minnesota river town. It had one of the best BSN programs in the country at the time, and very competitive--and not awarded until after the end of Freshman year. Clinical work was done at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I hated it, absolutely hated it. There was nothing to do, it was cold for months and months. And there was nothing to do but study. Did I mention that it was a women's college?

I auditioned for a college production that year, and got the part. But the next day, I was terrified that my whole college career would be compromised by the massive time commitment involved in theater. And sure that my organic chemistry grade would suffer, and mean that I wouldn't be admitted into the nursing program. I pulled myself together, and went to the first rehearsal only to tell the director that I would have to decline the role after all. He was holding a wire hanger at the time. He broke the neck right off of it. What an image. I cried the rest of the night.

That Spring, I decided to try out for summer stock at CST. My audition was a piece from the musical High Button Shoes that I had performed in high school. In retrospect, it probably wasn't sophisticated enough for a college troupe. I didn't get into the program. I cried. But this time, I just tucked it away as a choice I had made in choosing science over humanities, and pretty much gave it up.

That summer, my father died suddenly at age 60, and my world was rocked. I adored him. Any ideas of changing schools or majors were out of the question as my very Victorian mother struggled to find her way in a world she knew little about. So, any ideas of theater were obtunded with grief, fear, and the angst of what would happen to my life now.

Three years later, I graduated with the BSN, married, had a baby, then another. I practiced nursing then taught nursing for 13 years. Slowly, I moved away from nursing, filled with a longing for creative work that would feed my passion to make things out of nothing.

In the years that followed, I kept trying to get in front of an audience and still rais my children, which I was doing solo by then. I had a research interview with a major network, was asked to audition on the spot for a TV commercial ( I was there just to accompany a friend who was doing the PR for the client ), got a small role in a community theater production of Sound of Music. But I backed away each time. My reluctance was always the same--the time required to be physically present--when I was still raising my sons.

Well, everybody's grown now, and this is my time to go back and retrieve that dream. So, stay tuned. I'm in a production Off Off Broadway, a workshop by two great directors, filled with some very good thespians. And me.

Part of me is back in high school, loving the comraderie of a troupe of players, the change that occurs over time to a script as it begins to have a life of its own, the process of watching as the directors shape the scenes, coach the players, have an eye for what works.

I've been busy learning a Cockney accent and some Shakespeare, and practicing medieval "queenly" behaviors for one part. And learning to be bitchy yet civil to my stage husband in the other. It's an amazing journey for me. And well worth the wait.

The production opens on 44th and 9th in new York on October 29. Tickets went on sale today.

Who knew that the little girl who starred, directed and sold tickets to her first play in 1953 in a sunny, Iowa backyard would be telling this story today. I loved theater then, and I love it today--with gratitude for the chance to try again.

MC