Why Theater Is In My Life

I was 16 when I first stepped on the stage. 

It was my sophomore year of high school and a friend had been doing plays since the beginning of the year.   He had been after me to join him in the shows, saying it was a great way to meet girls (a line, I think, that has worked on many a teenaged boy).  I had always been a quiet shy kid and while I did look forward to meeting girls I couldn't really talk to them.  He had a sizable crush on the stage manager and convinced me to become the assistant stage manager.  I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  I just followed the stage manager’s lead and kept my head down.  When the guy playing Kenicke in our production of "Grease" had to drop out due to religious reasons (dancing?  Kissing a girl?), the director looked at me and said “can you sing?”  Having never sang in public before, I said “Yes?”  After a quick meeting by the piano where we found out, yes, I actually COULD hold a tune, I was cast in my first production.  Second lead, no less.  For a shy kid, this was quite the adventure.  I could do and say things I’d never say in real life.  It loosened me up and opened a new world for me.  From that point forward, I was in every show at South Brunswick High School and even joined the young adult summer drama program over at North Brunswick.  We performed in shows I had only vaguely heard of (Sweeney Todd, Evita, Barnum) and others I had fond memories of seeing in other formats (West Side Story).   I learned quite a bit about theater and people in those years and made some of the best friends I ever had.  And theater became a big part of my life.

I was an artist by nature; I can’t remember a time as a kid when I wasn’t sketching.  So I went to school for visual arts, but I brought my love of theater with me.  I did a few shows in college but concentrated on my art degree.  When I graduated, I worked in a bookstore until I got my first graphic design job for a carpet cleaning company in Milburn.  It was as most first jobs are: lot’s of work for little pay, being treated like garbage.  But I put up with it in the hope for better things.  Theater had to take a sideline in those days.  My commute got me home around 7:30 every night, too tired to dance or even learn lines, too frustrated to enjoy being around people.

After working there for a couple years, a friend of mine asked me to audition for a show at Playhouse 22, in East Brunswick.  I had performed there a few times over the years but I really hadn’t been back since college ended.  Thus began my return to performing.  One of my cast mates told me about another production over at Villagers Theater in Somerset, a space I hadn’t worked in yet.  Her friend was directing and I’d be perfect for it and she was auditioning and on and on.  Mostly to shut her up, I decided to audition.  For some reason, I got the lead.  The play was I Hate Hamlet.  Also cast was a woman I found very interesting who seemed to have no use for me.  Ana Cammarata was quiet, standoffish and a little rude.  I consider myself a likeable person and really couldn’t figure out why I had trouble talking to her.  During rehearsals we found some common ground but she still let me know that her “nephews were the only men in her life.  Period.”  We started dating by opening night  (Her character’s line to me “You were so adorable” came out “You ARE so adorable” one night.).  Our love of theater had brought us together. 

Over the next year, we were inseparable, both onstage and off.  We performed together all over New Jersey.  Oddly enough, during the first show we didn’t work on together, Chatham Theater’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I proposed to her.  Onstage.  In makeup.  And a dress.  Even odder, she said yes.

We took a break from theater the following year to get married and then jumped back in with a vengeance, doing show after show with a small group of cherished friends (almost our own repertory company), finally settling in at Villagers and Playhouse 22 mostly.  Ana directed two shows while pregnant with our first son, Joey, who became the show mascot when we did Midsummer again, two months after his birth.  Amazing and happy as it was and is, parenthood unfortunately signaled the end of doing shows together for a while. 

Now, years and two more kids later, Ana and I act and direct when we can and even Joey has been in a few plays (we were extremely fortunate to have been onstage together in A Christmas Carol for one weekend last year).  Ana is currently directing Hairspray at Playhouse 22 (June 3rd – 26th) and I’ll be directing Sweeney Todd there in October.  Our younger stars, Daniel and Jocelyn, haven’t been bitten by the acting bug.  Yet.  They love to watch musicals and laugh at old videos of their parents (“Look!  Dad had hair!”).  Joss is full of personality and I have no problem picturing her onstage some day.  Dan is very shy.  But we all know how that turns out.

Our love of theater is a still a big part of our lives.  I’ll be blogging in the coming weeks in an attempt to share that love.

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