How I Got My Equity Card

I imagined that this coveted card was some sort of golden bedazzled item which all of those fancy actors kept in their safes.

I was honestly scared to take my card at first. I wondered whether I would be able to find work anymore for having become Equity, whether anyone would hire me and whether or not that was the right step for my career at the time. I didn’t know if I was really ready to do it.

I had been auditioning for what seemed like anything that called me in, but got no bites. I even went as far as applying to take the Chicago Police Officer exam – since my father was a police officer, I figured that may be something I could explore.

My points began adding up – but I still had a long way to go. After Hair I was cast in a production of A Little Night Music at Seacoast Repertory in New Hampshire. During tech I noticed a breakdown on Equity for a musical called The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. In a twist of fate, it was the same company I had received my EMC card for, Speakeasy Stage!

I HAD to go to this audition. 

Outside of participating in a small amount of theatre in high school, I have no formal acting training. I did grow up as a performer on stage, though. My grandmother was a huge fan of Elvis Presley, so I was exposed to him at a very young age. Because my living room impersonations of him in front of the television went so well, my grandmother began to make me homemade Elvis costumes. That’s how my journey as a performer began.

I was accepted into the MFA Professional Actor Training Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986. One of the promises of attending UNC-CH was that PlayMakers Repertory Company, a LORT D theater, was the resident professional theater on campus, and that should I survive the first two years, my third year I would be hired as an Equity company member.

In the early months of 1999, I was finishing up my MFA at UC San Diego. One day, Eva Barnes (our speech professor) let the acting students know that Charlie Fee, Artistic Director of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival and an old friend of hers, would be coming to audition for the summer season. I offhandedly asked her if he needed a stage manager; she said she’d check and when Charlie arrived on campus, I had an interview. Soon after, he offered me an Equity stage manager position for the season, and a few months later, I was landing in Boise.

I attended the University of Southern California where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in stage management there. The stage management classes at that time were taught by Jonathan Lee, production manager at Center Theatre Group and Mary Klinger, one of the production stage managers at Center Theatre Group. They taught us well in the classroom, but we also got ample opportunity for hands-on experience

It was three days before my graduation from Emerson College when I got an offer from the Huntington Theatre Company to get my Equity card as an assistant stage manager on a production of Fences directed by Kenny Leon. I was shocked and thrilled.

A Chorus Line was the first truly professional show that I ever saw as a high school student and thought, “They know! They know what is inside my heart!” At the audition, Danny saw something in this crazy non-union woman, and I was cast in the role of Bebe.