Thespian Prime

Forty years ago at the University of Washington
I watched Adrian Sparks in a BFA professional
actor's training program play, and that very
day I began rehearsing for my own audition for
W. Duncan Ross, Arne Zaslove, and others. As these
things go, I thought Kismet was sucking my face,
for I survived the grueling audition, and was
accepted to the 4th year of the BFA program;
which by the way has survived four decades and
still is training actors at present.

In late 1977 I walked away from Acting, turned
my back on the rejection, the stress, and the
spoon-feeding of my already gargantuan ego, and
decided to "work at a real job" for the next
year. Then I spent the next 30+ years as a
Special Education teacher, working with the
blind. But as my Facebook albums attest, I
can never exorcise the glorious demons and
furies of my decade, my strutting on the
stage with pal, Adrian.

On Sparkie's FB page, as a header, he
has a quote:

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." -Thornton Wilder

He, and several other old theater cronies,
have tied their souls to the stage
sticking post, kept after it, never
let it go. I applaud him, and them.
I share with you now some of the
many visages of Adrian Sparks;
whom I call Sparkie, and several
other colorful epithetical namea,
and whom I love dearly from afar.