My History of Theatre

The earliest memory I can recall of acting on stage was an abbreviated version of “The Phantom Tollbooth” which we performed in middle school.  The only line I remember having, described a punishment that involved picking away at a mountain of salt with a sewing needle. 

I recall going to an acting camp sometime later in middle school with one of my best friends at the time, but I don’t remember any details beyond not showering for the entire week because they were communal and I was embarrassed to be seen naked.

Fast forward to senior year in high school when I finally got into one of the main stage productions (I had been in one or two one-off shows at school, but I didn’t feel like those really counted).  Admittedly, my inclusion into “The Will Rogers Follies” that year probably had something to do with the majority of the senior class boycotting the show due to drama with the drama teacher (shocker, I know), but one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.

When I got into college I became a lot more prolific, having decided to major in Theatre (alongside Computer Science), and it’s at that point when I actually started my education in the craft.  While I had taken Theatre Arts for four years in high school, I discovered very early into my college education that I hadn’t actually been taught much over the last four years. 

This was made apparent when I went back to high school that first year to see some of friends perform “Little Shop of Horrors.” With only a few months of classes under my belt, I could already see all the glaring problems and shortcomings with the performance onstage.  I wanted to take everyone aside after the show and explain about subtext and motivation and tactics and all the other wonderful nuances about acting that made it so wonderful.  But I did not.  I congratulated them on a great performance and made my way back to college. 

Over the course of my college career I did about a half-dozen shows, and worked tech on about the same number.  And though I never managed to be a particularly good student I did manage to graduate with my BA and weasel my way into an internship up in the Poconos (Pennsylvania) for eight months. 

It was here that I got my first glimpse into the professional actor’s life, getting to live and work side-by-side with professional actors, whose stories of living in New York and traveling on national tours were filled with drugs, sex, humor, wonder and enough adventures to fill up a single life three-fold.  I had no desire to live job-to-job though, and was content to stick with community theatre after my internship was over and I returned to Virginia.  Perhaps it was not as crazy a lifestyle as those held by the professionals, but I’ve had my own share of stories to tell and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

I spent the next four years in and out of the community theatre scene in Northern Virginia, right up until I left for California in 2006.  My final huzzah was one of my favorite experiences, “Disney’s Beauty & the Beast,” in which I got to play Fishmonger, Wolf and Salt Shaker as part of a wonderful cast of characters.  I made a ton of friends during the run, and had I not left I’d probably still be in constant contact with all of them today.  But I did leave, and in doing so unwittingly started a six year drought from acting which was only recently ended with my performance in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.” 

But that’s fodder for another post, and this one has already run on longer than I had intended, so I’ll leave things here for today.