When I was eight years old, I was in my first play. I was The Elven Queen in The Hobbit at Fountain Valley Recreation Center. Twenty-five years later, I got my Equity card. Hey, sometimes you have to be patient.
I had performed regularly, doing shows with friends, always with a day job, or two, to support myself. I sold marble peaches in SoHo, taught SAT and GRE test preparation courses in Chicago and temped at Citibank in Long Island City. I was happily working as a children’s magazine editor at Scholastic when Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman wrote Urinetown. They asked me to play Little Sally in the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999, and I was lucky enough to remain in the cast as the show moved Off-Broadway in 2001. I joined Equity on the first day of rehearsal, and for the first time in my life, my job was to perform.
When Urinetown opened on Broadway, I would stand on stage marveling that less than nine months before I had been sitting in my cubicle every day wondering what would become of me. I am ever grateful to Equity for helping to make my new life possible.
