When I was nine, I wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor. Those clothes, those jewels, the cameras, my name in lights. Black hair, violet eyes. The way she looked in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. A movie star. As I got older and my hair didn't darken and my eyes stayed green, I gave it up. By the time I got to high school, theater had become my first love. I'd have a career on the stage. Ah...life in the theatah. All that drama. Behind St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, DC, there was a small professional theater company. I auditioned and won an apprenticeship there. What a thrill. One step closer to my dream. It was a wonderful program. We learned to apply stage makeup, work the sound and lights, build sets, paint scenery. The works. We even had small non-speaking parts in some of their productions. The highlight of the program was a workshop with a prominent local director. He arrived with a flourish, a fedora and a long black cape. His first priority was to teach us to project our voices. It was theater in the round. We were to sit on a stool lit by a single light in the middle of an otherwise darkened stage and read the prologue to Henry V. Nothing to it. A snap. Oh, yes ... one other tiny detail. With two marbles under our tongues. Ah. Okay. My number came up first. Lucky me. I was ready for this. My time in the spotlight. Literally. The very dramatic director told me to speak from my diaphragm. He read the first line the way he wanted it read. "Oh for a muse of...(deep breath) (from the diaphragm)...fire." Etc., etc., etc. Okay. I got it. And so I began. "Oh for a muse of...(deep breath)..." This was it. I'd shake the rafters with my projection. How impressive I'd be. Ethel Merman who? I didn't make it to "fire." When I inhaled for my big moment, I swallowed one of my marbles. Forget about breathing from my diaphragm, I couldn't breathe at all. My breath finally whooshed out in a giant gasp, causing the other marble to fly out of my mouth and me to fly off the stool . One foot hit the floor, the other landed on the marble. I slid off the stage and out of the theater. My acting career ended with an unforgettably dramatic flair. I lost the theatah, kept the drama.
Book update. Got two more chapters off to my editor today. Spent a lot of time this week in the snowy mountains of the 1800s.
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