Very excited to announce that I'll be spending the summer 'dropping trou' for Theatre Aspen as Harold in The Full Monty!
Can't wait to head back to Colorado, the land where the beer flows like wine, where weed is legal, and cheetos are an endangered species.
Will I look better naked at 8000 feet?
A few moons ago, I was an overzealous pre-med student at the University of Michigan with very little (read: zero) experience in theatre. I had decided to take an acting class 'because it would be fun' - and was soon asked to join the cast of a professional on-campus production of Oedipus, as the nonspeaking boy who brought Tiresias (the blind prophet), on and off stage. I remember saying to the Director, "Well okay, but only if I don't miss Marching Band". Somehow they still cast me.
The play was my first glimpse of Professional Theatre; and as I focused intensely on keeping Tiresias from bumping into the furniture, I was told offhandedly, "Oh, because this show is Equity, you can join the Membership Candidate program," (Actors' Equity is the Union which represents Actors and Stage Managers, and EMC is a program by which you can accumulate weeks towards becoming a full-fledged Equity Member). So I signed up for EMC, truly without considering it further - mostly because I was told to.
My character got beat up quite a bit.
Flash forward to a small theatre in Seattle some 5+ years later, where I was in my last year of conservatory training at the University of Washington's Professional Actor Training Program. We were doing a play called Mephisto, an adaptation of the political thriller by Klaus Mann, set in Nazi Germany. I had just started considering where my career might take me, and was thinking about a move away from Seattle to either LA or New York. We were on a break, and the director was standing near me, speaking to the Stage Manager, and in my conversation a few steps away I mentioned that I had joined the Equity EMC program. Her head snapped around and she stared directly at me.
"You're going Equity?" she said.
"Um...yeah, I, I guess," I stammered.
Her eyes narrowed. "Do you have any idea what that means?"
All of a sudden I got very uncomfortable - I had no idea what that meant.
"Well... I guess, that, um, I'll be a professional?" My only thought about had been that perhaps I'd get to audition for the Big Stuff, and maybe I'd meet some really hot girls.
The director took a step toward me, her eyes boring into mine.
"The very act of joining a Labor Union is a political act," she said. "You don't join a Labor Union because you want benefits. You join because you believe in what a group can do to defend the individual."
"Um...Okay."
Her stare never wavered. "If you do this - if you become a Union Member," she continued, "I challenge you. I challenge you to become politicized. Don't ever take what has been achieved for you for granted."
I never forgot that moment. And once I got to New York, just after I 'went pro', in 1993, I started volunteering. First as a deputy, then on committees at Equity, and finally running for Council, which is the governing body of Actors' Equity. And looking back on that kid who joined EMC then... here's what I know now:
Just finished Closer Than Ever at Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach, FL, with Kristen Beth Williams, Jennifer Byrne, and Kevin Spirtas. As you can see we didn't get along, really.
