Stage Fright

In the olden days, I wanted to be an actress. Okay, a movie star. But I had this little problem: stage fright. In college plays, I spent every minute that I wasn’t on stage, on the toilet. [Some people puke when they're nervous; I crap.]

So Hollywood appeared to be a better choice for breaking into showbiz than New York. The terror seemed more manageable without a theatre full of eyes staring at me. At least, that was the plan. As it turned out, the very thought of auditions was enough to send me into panic mode. I was in L.A. for four months and never went on a single audition. I finally realized that I didn’t have the courage it takes to put yourself on the line to be critiqued and rejected day after day for an entire career. I gave up my movie star dream and went back to waitressing with a HUGE sigh of relief.

But still, the need for attention burned in my gut like a hot charcoal. “Rocky” exploded on the screen that year, and Sylvester Stallone’s personal story of triumph in writing it and getting it produced inspired me. I decided to write a screenplay about my exhilarating and terrifying green card marriage to a gorgeous Greek, an adventure in which I was still deeply enmeshed at the time. I wrote in notebooks, on envelopes and even napkins between customers at Langer’s Deli.

But I couldn’t finish it because I was right in the middle of living the story. I didn’t know how it was going to end, and I couldn’t imagine a fictional ending that felt “true”. Eventually, the actual ending turned out to be less than happy, which scuttled my idea of a romantic comedy. Now, with the perspective of time and maturity, I can see that it could make a very good movie or book because of the unattractive realities. [Yeah, I really should write it. I know.] But at the time, I couldn’t see that and like everything else, I gave up.

Which led, oddly, to broadcasting school and the discovery that stage fright wasn’t so bad when the audience couldn’t see me. There was a radio version of it, however–mic fright–but it was easily overcome with the simple mind trick of pretending that no one was listening. On my first job, I didn’t have to pretend; there really was no audience, or none to speak of. That freed me to be as awful as I needed to be in order to learn the craft. I fell in love with radio in that ramshackle station. It was the first and only thing I ever did that I did not quit.