How I Got My Equity Card

I had just graduated from Oklahoma City University and was headed to the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia to become an opera singer. I decided to make a pit stop in New York

It was late spring and I was close to completing my first year as an acting student at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse.

It was the late 70s and I was living in Los Angeles working as a backup singer for Perry Como. It had been a great job, but I made the difficult decision to not go out on tour again and file for unemployment.

In the spring of 1978, I was taking three courses at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. The course credits were to be transferred back to the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago [now the Theatre School at DePaul University], where I had earned a certificate in a three-year acting program two years earlier, and needed the remaining nine credit hours to satisfy the academic requirements to combine with my certificate to complete my B.F.A.

I joined Actors' Equity on September 16, 2010, after being cast as Constanze by Brooke Wetzel Ciardelli in Northern Stage’s production of Amadeus.

In the spring of 1959, after a couple of wonderful, wild years in the Big Apple, I found myself in Texas — a member of the Dallas Repertory Theatre.

Because I have been a Muppet performer for more than a decade, I received my AFTRA card in 1993, when I started working on Sesame Street, and I earned my SAG card when I was cast in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. But, I always felt like I wasn't really an actor without an Equity card. But my career was headed in a different direction, and though I was frustrated with my inability to get stage work, I chalked it up to fate.

It was December 1943. I was still in college and, as I remember, very busy. 

I received my Equity card in 2003 thanks to the vibrant theatre community in my hometown of Seattle.

It was 1969 – the final “Summer of Love.” I was a dyed-in-the-paisley hippie: sandals on my feet, elephant bell bottoms hugging low on my hips, love beads strung around my neck and flowers in my Jimi Hendrix size afro.