My first acting opportunity came in 1971 during my junior year of high school. Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the play, but I do remember my stellar performance as a dead body. You may be familiar with the well known trust exercise where you fall backwards counting on your teammates to catch you before you hit the ground.
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Well I got to fall backwards off the stage into the hands of my high school buddies (playing grave diggers) for weeks of rehearsals and several performances, while they patiently waited until the final performance to drop me on my head. I’m pretty sure that concussion has a lot to do with why I’ve continued to pursue performing. I’ve never been quite the same after that.
My next outing was at community college in less dangerous roles as a sharecropper and Gospeleer in the musical, Finian’s Rainbow in 1974. I thoroughly enjoyed being on stage, but life, family and working full time kept me away from acting for a long, long, long time. I thought about it often but just never made the time.
Finally, in April of 2001 I found my way back to acting with the Pine Nut Players Community Theatre in Monroe, Washington while I was in between day jobs. I played Doc Porter in Crimes of the Heart and I loved it! Unfortunately I found myself gainfully employed again shortly after and it was not until 2007 that I had the good fortune to learn of a new theatre group starting up in my own little town of Duvall.
About a dozen of us met on a sunny afternoon in September and decided we’d take a run at getting Cascade Community Theatre of the ground and we’ve never looked back. This is one of the most exciting and truly wonderful things I’ve ever done. It’s turned out to be about a lot more than acting. I’ve become active in my community in a lot of ways that I never could have imagined and I have my theatre “family” to thank for it.
In December of 2007 we brought our first production, An Ideal Husband to life and I had the good fortune of landing one of the lead characters, Sir Robert Chiltern. After that I was hooked. Next, in March of 2008 I played Roy in The Odd Couple. It was a nice little part with a lot of punch lines. In October of the same year I followed with the most demanding role I’d ever taken on as Juror #10 in Twelve Angry Men. This was our first heavy drama and a great challenge for me.
I stay busy helping to promote Cascade Community Theatre in a variety of ways including creating and maintaining the website when I’m not actually in a production.
I can’t imagine life without being involved in the theatre so I’m sure there will be many more plays ahead for me. Just like my musical performances, you never know where I might show up in the future. I hope I’ll see you wherever it turns out to be!
Visit www.cascadecommunitytheatre.org. See what we're up to!