When I first got involved in theater (see “JLO”) I was focused on doing work backstage and despite a brief and reasonably successful experience in Junior High (see TBD), was still generally too shy to consider being onstage as well. But some of my latent desire and external circumstances led me on a path to put me under the lights in front of an audience by my junior year in high school.

Prior to that, my combination of timidity and low self esteem made me very reluctant to take the spotlight, though at some level I longed to be acknowledged as talented or at least capable. My work backstage in several theater productions with JLO and my high school’s drama club had given me some of that longed for acknowledgement of competence at least as a lighting and set designer and a person who could pound out some sort of stage adaption however limited or flawed (see “Lord of the Flies”) on my portable electric typewriter. (more…)

Before Jennifer Lopez’s fans laid claim to this three-letter combo, it was the acronym for the unique youth theater group I participated in from 1970 to 1975, playing a role either backstage or later onstage in over twenty musicals, comedies, dramas and children’s theater. During the years I was a member of “Junior Light Opera”, it was a group of some seventy youth, ages five to twenty and just two facilitating adults – my speech and stagecraft teacher Michael and a school orchestra teacher named Sue. (more…)