I can't tell you the thrill and joy of when I was cast in my first Broadway show. Granted, it was 'Starlight Express' and it was exhausting, but it was my first time on Broadway, and there was nothing like it.
'Grease' was my Broadway debut. That was eye-opening. At the same time, it was very familiar. It was a Broadway show, but it's kind of the same as doing a show in Minnesota. It's the same type of rehearsal process. You are doing 8 shows a week, but I worked at a theatre in Minnesota that did 11 shows a week.
When I was about 15... I made my first attempt as a leading lady, and was, of course, a complete failure.
I had no ambition to become an actor at all.
I've never been onstage in my life.
I opened the show with this line: "I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that's tomorrow night.
The first time I ever acted was in 'The Glass Menagerie' in high school, and my first line was, 'I didn't know Shakespeare had a sister.'
The first job I got was a production of 'Fame - the Musical,' at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts, and it got me my Equity card, too. I waited 12 hours to be seen for it, though!
Usually in the first performances I'm completely panicked. And I pull myself together. By the time you get to the end of the play, you really start to have fun.
When I was about 16, I did a Neil LaBute play called 'A Gaggle of Saints' from a collection of plays called 'Bash' - very violent story about a young Mormon who goes to Central Park with his friend and beats up a gay guy. But it was the first thing I had ever done, and I thought, "God, this is fun! This is far more fun than anything else I've been doing at school. I want to stick with it."
I got dared to audition for a play by my best friend Paul. He got cast in 'Hamlet,' and I got cast in 'Prelude to a Kiss,' and that changed everything.
I got my Equity Card from Berkeley Rep when I was 22 years old. I was cast in David Saar's 'The Yellow Boat.'
My first show was 'No Exit.' You couldn't find a more pretentious beginning, but it also instilled some sense of quality.
At the beginning of a long-running play, everyone's nervous and paces around in a panic and reapplies lipstick. After a while, you'll get long-running card games or word games like Boggle.
The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.
Being back on stage in New York, off-Broadway - I mean, that's an actor's dream.
