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MONDAYS WITH MOM: Take a Bow, Mom
My Mom was always encouraging me to go onstage. She wasn’t a stagemother like Mama Rose but she was certainly ready to stand behind whatever talent I could muster. She was the architect of my theatre ambition, signing me up for tap, ballet and jazz lessons (my faves thanks to the costumes and the shoes!), putting me in the choir (a weak soprano), and sending me to the convent for piano lessons. I’m a good dancer but just an okay singer but that never stopped me from belting out “Funny Girl” and believing I was just a hair off Barbra. A grade school friend who reached out on facebook told me that once I actually walked up and down the aisles of our classroom, singing to the students. I was a Gleek before there was one.
The piano lessons never worked. My Mom and Dad put the old upright down in our basement so that they could shut the door on me while I practiced. I can remember banging away so badly that even our dog Andy would climb to the top of the steps and scratch the door to be released from musical prison.
But my acting bones grew strong from high school and college plays and then morphed into a career of making new business presentations and speeches–not exactly theater. Mom never gave up though. With every book I wrote, she used to say, “You should get on Oprah!” “You should have her job!” Yeah, right.
Now, six years after losing my Mom, I am going for it. I’ve been working with a terrific playwright and director named Martha Wollner who’s with the LABYrinth Theater in New York. And I’ve been developing and rehearsing the script of the “The God Box” with her. This blog on today’s Huffington Post tells the tale.
Hey, Mom. I did it. Thanks for all those years of waiting in the wings. Your turn to take a bow.
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