Back on the stage

My wife and I have rediscovered a common bond missing from our lives since we were newlyweds: the theater.

We met in 1985 in Ashtabula, Ohio during auditions for the incredible show, "Catch 22." The audition called for a stage kiss and the rest, as they say, was history. I was cast as the male lead, Yossarian, and Melissa was cast as Nately's Whore (the script's description, not mine.) Anyway, that summer saw me in "Catch 22," "Pippin" and the ballet "Cinderella." In Cinderella, my dancer sister prevailed upon me to be one of the ugly stepsisters (paired, naturally, with a short, round black man) as the comic relief. My wife took her friend to the show, indicated me in my basketball hightops, gingham bloomers and green strapless bra, and said "that's the man I'm gonna marry." I'd have called psychiatric emergency services!

Prior to that, we had both been extensively involved in theater at the school and community levels (25+ shows for me, more than a dozen for Melissa.)

We married in 1987 and started our progression through various cities as my wife pursued her undergraduate and, eventually, medical degrees and I worked at various newspapers. Theater fell by the wayside. Children showed up in the final year of medical school and in residency. Dogs and horses showed up after that and we found that our love for the rural West Virginia landscape could not balance the scales with the substandard education our children were receiving.

We returned to our roots in Northeast Ohio.

We also returned to our theater roots and found that our own little acorns had not fallen far from the trees...both children begged to audition for the community theater's production of the musical "Honk!" and both were cast. I also auditioned for the play "Who's On First" (no relation to Abbott and Costello) and was cast as the male lead. Melissa was too busy with work to audition, but filled in backstage and won a season-ending award for her labor. This summer, everyone tried out for "The Music Man," but did not make the cut. I also auditioned for "Driving Miss Daisy" and was cast as the son, Boolie, in the three-person show. It was perhaps the best show I've ever done.

Now, we're all in rehearsals for "Dark of the Moon," to be performed in October at a local theater in which we've not yet appeared. It's the play version of the song "The Ballad of Barbara Allen," in which a "morally flexible" young woman marries a witch boy, which ignites the community's superstitious fears and eventually results in tragedy. I appeared in this play 28 years ago as the bad-guy strongman and romantic rival...this time, I'm the hellfire-and-damnation preacher who leads the charge against the doomed romance. Melissa is the uber-superstitious woman who burns Barbara's eventual witch child in the fire and our children are cast as Appalachian youngsters (not too far a stretch.)

It's great to have everyone working on the same show. It's doubly great to watch the children growing as actors and people through their interaction with the play and the really fun cast.

The theater void has again been filled and will, hopefully, continue to enrich our lives for years to come.