In Explanation - Part One of Sunday Fill

Yesterday, I got this, in part, as a comment on my post:
warriorwoman: "Why become an artist? Is there a creative artist in there, just bursting to get out???"
And in reply I said:
"The quick answer is 'Yes.' I started art classes to help me become a better photographer. Who knew I would find I had a voice that wanted to be heard through drawing and painting? Not me. Not beforehand. But as I look back, I have always looked to some form of artistic expression as a release. I have written poetry. I have written songs. I have, almost all of my life, harbored a secret desire to be an actor. Well, not so secret, really. It was just something I gave up on early. Some form of art has been in there all along. Looking for away out."

And I thought to myself, "Explaining all of that might make an interesting post." And then I thought that perhaps it might be too long a post, so I think I will, from time to time, offer up bits and pieces as we go along - Sunday Fill fodder, so to speak. So here is the first of "Sunday Fill".

The Actor in me.

When I was a little boy in grade school, each class presented a play in the Spring - an interesting diversion after a long, hard Chicago Winter. From Kindergarten thru Eighth Grade, I had the lead in the class play.

When I got to High School, my English teacher, Brother Chevalo, told me that if I wanted to pass English, I had to go across the street to Holy Family Academy (girls school) and audition for the play they were about to put into production. I was cast as Epops, King of the Birds in a play based on Aristophenes' 'The Birds'.

Shortly afterward, I joined a theater group based in Downtown Chicago under the direction of Stan Sidlik, the drama teacher at HFA. It was there I began to realize my talent as a 'character' actor. At age 15. There still isn't anything I relish more than a meaty villain.

After I came home from the Marines and Viet Nam, I found myself back in the theater. I was a member of the standing company of a Semi-Professional group at Encore Theater, in Chicago's Old Town district. We did a different musical every two months - one 'up' and one in rehearsal. I learned a lot there.

In the spring of 1967, I took off for a tour with "Pinocchio", a life-size puppet show. That tour would be a whole series of posts all by itself. I was Wilbur, a talking tree in the Enchanted Forest. Among other parts. I learned a lot there, too.

Everybody I knew or who knew me, thought I was headed for Hollywood. And it was what I thought I wanted. But there's this thing about me. If I let something sit long enough - if the question is allowed to simmer long enough - I will usually come up with the right answer. And I began to realize that there were people around me with a WORLD of talent who were starving. People with far more talent than me who were just not getting anywhere - and I began to realize that what I wanted was something that, more than anything else, seemed to depend on being in the right place at the right time. Seemed to depend on who you know, rather than who you are or how talented you might be. And the one thing I was sure of, about myself, was that I had NEVER been one to be in the right place at the right time and I CERTAINLY wasn't going to prostitute myself to get to know the 'right' people in the way they wanted to be known. So I made a conscious decision to pursue 'home and family' rather than the glitz and glamor. Because underneath, there is a tarnish that I found distasteful. And so I became a 'workaday joe'. And I wound up here, where I am now. It ain't such a bad place - but at times, I look back and wonder if I might have .... no, never mind.

Part Two will follow on - some Sunday when I don't have anything else. And if you like.