The stamp story is actually the story of how I hooked up with Tad & Gené in the
first place. At the height of my busy computer consulting career I received more
mail than some small countries. I would zoom through my mail at light speed to just
get to the important stuff.
The setting is this. It's late September 1995. I'm throwing mail straight
to the trash, and a piece of mail appeared with a Marilyn Monroe stamp on it. I
thought to myself, anybody who took the time to put a Marilyn Monroe stamp on something,
deserves a piece of my time. (For those of you who don't know, I kinda have a thing
for Marilyn Monroe, not an obsession mind you, just a thing.)
The piece of mail was the first flyer ever for a new acting school in town called The
Ensemble School. I thought that sounded super cool and called up the number right
away. I figured I would just leave my name and number on a machine because it was
late at night when I called. What had actually happened was that Tad & Gené put
Marg's number on the flyer or she was covering their phone or something like that, because
they were out of town for some reason. I spoke to Marg for like an hour
and 1/2 if I
recall properly. She told me all about Tad & Gené, their training and the
concept for the school. I left my name and number and eagerly anticipated my first
class.
Tad & Gené got my name from a borrowed mailing list that I signed up on when I
auditioned for Feste Productions (they were doing Lost In Yonkers -
where oddly enough, Steve Lofts and Shawn
Hatosy - yes that Shawn Hatosy - played the kids). I had a
horrible audition for Keith Purtee and when I asked him about that audition many years
later, he recalled that most of the time I had my back to him. I had no idea what I
was doing and had never auditioned for anything before (except for one thing in high
school). My girlfriend at the time convinced me to go and audition, so I did.
At that time, I was searching for something different in my life. I had developed
a successful computer consulting career, but I just felt like something was missing.
What was missing, was the fact that my whole life all I every really wanted to do
was to entertain people and make em' laugh. The Ensemble School had their hands full
with me when I first started and since that first class on Oct 2, 1995, my life has never
been the same.
