It began with sawdust, clowns, and the high wire. It began with walking excitedly across muddy English fields to a gaudy big top. It began with spectacle and a world elsewhere. Then, on my ninth birthday, sawdust met the stage when my mum took me to see the ultimate circus musical, Barnum, starring Michael Crawford […]
How I got hooked on theatre: Laura Giannarelli
I can’t remember a time when I was NOT hooked on performing. My Mama played ‘Let’s pretend’ with my sister and me in the kitchen back when I was four and five years old and I loved it. I was cast as the third good fairy in The Sleeping Beauty in third grade; that was […]
How I got hooked on theatre: Eric Schaeffer
I grew up in a small town in the middle of Amish Country in Pennsylvania. There wasn’t much to do other than ride your bike, go to the pool or count cows. So we had a first grade teacher named Mr. Reid Lessig – who just loved the theatre. He would put on plays in […]
How I got hooked on theatre: John Geoffrion
“The transformative power of live theatre” has arguably become a cliché, co-opted by the marketing and development departments of large regional theatres to convince the locals of their cultural obligation to spend hundreds of dollars a year on subscriptions, or thousands of dollars to get their names engraved on a patio brick or lobby wall. […]