the beginning

So how does a self-proclaimed shy girl end up in show business?
Trial and Error and an undecided major in college.
When I was four I dreamed of becoming a ballerina. I imagined wearing a tutu every day and pirouetting through life.
My mom enrolled me in a combination tap/ballet class only we did not have the money for tap and ballet shoes. This meant that for the tap portion of the class I wore a pair of brown Mary Jane’s. For the ballet portion of the class I wore my Spiderman bedroom slippers.
I began to dread going to class. This was not the ballet I had seen in little clips on Sesame Street. There were no pink slippers. There were no tutus and then there was that flap-ball-change which was not ballet at all.
The culmination of this class was a recital for the parents. I had already been in holiday pageants at my preschool and getting up in front of people was not for me. Most of the recital was spent with me red faced and crying on stage. The only good thing was that I got to wear a tutu.
My next flirtations with the stage came in late grade school through high school years. My mom got remarried landing me in the kid’s choir in my step dad’s church. My new aunt was the director of the choir, which could be a good thing if I had been able to sing. I couldn’t so I ended up changing the foam core set from clubhouse to Noah’s Arc. I also made sure the props got passed to the little kids.
I remained active in my church’s drama group through high school. During a dinner theater production my role was to be waitress. Not the waitress onstage but an actual waitress during the dinner theater portion. Since this was not what I signed up for and I was already a hostess at a restaurant I quit drama group.
At school I would show up to auditions only to chicken out before actually auditioning. I did show up to help build sets which was kind of fun.
In high school my dream of what I wanted to be when I grew up changed. I wanted to be an editor of Sassy magazine. I practiced for this by being the news editor on my high school paper. But I was still shy especially when it came to interviewing people.
Fast forward to college during a time when it was just becoming ok to enter with an undecided major. So that is what I did. I loved English and thought I might do something with that so I ended up with an English Professor advisor.
*Small world story my advisor in Iowa was a childhood friend with my Aunt’s sister who lived in New York. Meaning my advisor grew up in the same town in Upstate New York as my Mom.
So my English advisor advised me to a theater class and I was hooked. I volunteered in the costume shop sewing muscles on an alien costume and then I worked wardrobe for a show. From then on there was no turning back. I had found my place on the stage was actually backstage. I was in show business, baby.