A Performer With A Purpose

I was exposed to theatre at around 9 years old seeing Pippin on Broadway and being around the semi-professional theatre my parents were involved in when I lived in Venezuela. (English-speaking theatre) The bug was well implanted then and I loved nothing more than dancing, singing and being in plays. We even put them on in the backyard!

After moving to the states and enduring the ‘devastation’ of not making the cheerleading squad, I found my place by doing plays and musicals in high school and in community theatre. I wanted to study theatre in college but my mother’s tearful pleas stopped me. She was a painter and begged me not to pursue an artistic degree because I could end up being ‘just a secretary’ like her. I listened and got a communications degree with all the other frustrated actors and did every play on campus available to non-theatre majors. I was less afraid to move to NYC after graduation and pursue my dream to be on Broadway than I was to write a resume and get a job, so off I went. (I did not want to be 35 and regret not trying)

I gave myself five years to ‘make it’, which to me meant having a union card, a reputable agent and a promising trajectory of roles. After eight years, I was still waiting on tables and only working half the year as a performer. I had some good roles under my belt and I had my union card, but no agent or momentum. I went to what I said would be my last audition, a show slated for Broadway that was in the workshop stages, and got it. We were all promised by Cy Coleman (composer) and Joe Layton (director) that if the show went to Broadway we did too. Seven years later, the show went to Broadway but I was already deeply entrenched in my current career.

At a scholarship contest for an acting school, I was asked “What would be possible if you became successful as a performer?”. My answer felt like the ‘right’ answer and scored me the scholarship, but little did I know that ten years later I would come to fully understand what I said. My answer was: “If I were successful as a performer, people would see me perform a role on stage and be moved to change something in their life---they would be made to think and be inspired in some way.” In that answer, lay the true purpose of my life.

Not getting the results I wanted as an actor had fueled a series of upsets that landed me at the door of Fair Oaks Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, anorexic and suicidal. Despite working hard for years, an enviable drive and having a certain degree of success, I thought I was an utter failure. “No one worked harder at their dream, why hadn’t it worked out for me?”, I thought.

I did not allow the medical team to check me in. I fled with my mother in tow and over the course of the next eighteen months, retrained my brain through exercises of my own making until I was once again, a healthy, fully functioning person.

As I recovered, I realized I had a new compassion for human beings who all have their struggles in many guises and forms. I also found that I had a highly accurate intuitive sense. These new discoveries and my studies of “A Course In Miracles”, helped me feel certain that I needed to stop waiting on tables and find other work to support myself. I remember thinking that if big success was meant to be mine it would find me and not require the sacrifices I had made to try to make it as an actor. I just knew that if I learned Happiness, Peace and Love, I could do anything.

A firm, persistent intuitive message in my head convinced me to finally take action and call an old acting mentor of mine who I had a clear sense would lead me to my next job or career. He had become a coach. Something I had never heard of. I became a client and within two years had started teaching presentation skills in corporations, and gotten married to my dream love. It was then that I told my mentor I wanted to train to do what he did. He had indeed led me to my next career!

The rest of my professional achievements, you can find in my bio, but I can say now in hindsight that there were no mistakes in having pursued a performing career. It has made public speaking a passion (never fearful or a nuisance) and it has made doing TV something I enjoy thoroughly. What I have now, that I did not have in my time as a performer in the theater, is a purpose. I don’t perform for the applause. I perform with complete honesty to make people think, raise their awareness, become more conscious and do the right thing for themselves and others.

It is only recently that I have realized that the performer never died and need not be apologized for or marginalized. She’s back and having a blast!