It was 1975 and I’d been a fixture on the Off-Off Broadway theatre scene for years when director Neil Flanagan offered me the lead roles to be performed in rotating rep out on Cape Cod. They were the classic O.O.B plays, The Madness of Lady Bright by Lanford Wilson and Robert Patrick’s The Haunted Host. But it was an Equity contract and that worried me. My first love was experimental theatre, and I was afraid that, once unionized, I’d be unable to work in the shows I loved. Still, these were roles I could really sink my teeth into; the money was fantastic and I could escape Brooklyn for the summer. The offer was too good to turn down, so I joined the union. We played the summer in Provincetown and even transferred The Haunted Host to Boston’s Charles Playhouse. Coming home to NYC, I had surprisingly little trouble adjusting to Equity approved experimental theatre. Go figure.
