Post date: Nov 12, 2012 11:54:49 PM
I remember my trips on the bus to Newark for Taming of the Shrew. I was so intent on memorizing the script that, when I ‘came to,’ I found everyone staring at me as though I were crazy. I’d been gesturing and mouthing my lines unaware of where I was. You didn't dare show up for rehearsals unprepared.
Some years ago I picked up the New York Times and read a story of a train derailing in the meadowlands where the first doctor on the scene was one Robert Lahita and I thought, Our Nathan Detroit? I wondered if he still had his accordion in the trunk of his car. Hope so! I ran into Sheila Wingerter around thirty years ago. I forget what shows she and her brother Mike were in, but she had her nine little children with her and still looked sixteen. She said Mike had become a musician in Boston.
And what of Sylvia and her pins? Kenny Creegan ball-room dancing in the foyer with Maybeth Fuchs? When the road company of Lend Me A Tenor came through my town, I was watching the excellent Michael Waldron in the lead not knowing he'd been part of the drama guild a few years after me.
I became a playwright. For a few years I worked on the Young Playwrights’ Festival at the Wharton Center for the Arts, writing a script for the website that teaches format to teen-agers. They reminded me of us. How did Frank do it! I’m not able to attend the reunion but I'm always happy remembering that time. It was good to have a lot expected from you at that age. And it was fun.
Eileen Kelly O'Leary