Back to the mirror

Getting involved with VANITIES was rather simple, actually. I simply put the word out there that I wanted to work on this project with Judy and it happened. I don’t know if that’s how it normally happens, or if this was a special case or what. This has been the great part of this process so far: everything I have set out to do in the name of directing I seem to receive almost immediate results (and if not results then at least answers or responses). This didn’t seem to happen as much as an actor! Sure, I worked consistently up until a couple years ago – I think once I left the MILLIE tour and did a few regional gigs, but I was hitting that area of being “much older than I looked” syndrome and a maturity level was betraying the age of the roles I was playing…and yet I didn’t look old enough to play the roles for which I was really age-appropriate – and I didn’t have the wherewithal, urge or need to fight it; to convince others that I really should have been considered for this part or that role. It wasn’t laziness. It was acceptance. I was ready for something else, I just didn’t know what it was and I had felt this coming for a long time. So the more I wanted to direct, the more think I may have tapped into a source of power and determination. At the risk of sounding a bit new-age-ish, I must say that it certainly feels like the universe is responding to what I’m doing. The choices I’m making certainly resonate within me. But then I still ask the question: “Okay, then, how do I make a living at this?” I think the answers will come.

I recently received some great advice from my friend Diane, an agent who represents actors as well as directors. I asked her not to represent me as a director, but just to give me some clues as to what the hell I should be doing (Yes, there are guidebooks and handbooks out the butt for this sort of thing, but I learned very early on that it’s a uniquely individual process) – and she simply said, “Just start telling people that you’re a director. See what happens.” Man, was she right. It made me recall a like from a Neale Donald Walsh book that basically said to act as if you were in that situation and the universe will respond and you will have created it. Hmmm…