Sacramento’s Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse was my home away from home in the 80s and 90s. For several of those years between marriages, it was my home instead of home.
I don’t have an exact count but I’d guess I performed in some 20 plays at Stagedoor and directed another ten or so. I wrote a few, too. After each performance, the cast and crew would gather around the beer and wine bar in the lobby and relive the glories and horrors of that night’s show. We drank and laughed while learning the fine points of our craft, of action, reaction and timing, through our shared experience. We kept at it until the wee hours, then reluctantly headed to the parking lot with the happy promise that we’d all get together the next night and do it all again.
I was in my thirties then and thoroughly immersed in my life as a single father and my blossoming radio career. But I still had dreams of a different, distant future.
“When I get old,” I told my theater family, “I’m going to get acting jobs in movies and TV. All the young, hot bodies are fighting for stardom. I’ll wait until they’ve all burned out,” I said. “Then I’ll just scoop up all the old man character roles.”
It was my retirement plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time when TV shows all featured the same two or three old men playing minor roles and window dressing, actors who had been around forever learning technique and aging into the life experience needed for old man character roles.
Forty years have slipped away. I guess it’s time.
I just filled out a form for a casting agency to appear as an extra in a TV series filming in the Fort Worth Stockyards. It’s a prequel to the hit series, “Yellowstone”, called “1883”.
I love Westerns. I’ve eaten dust on horseback.
I loved playing cowboy 60 years ago and I loved being on stage 20 years later. Maybe I’m ready to saddle up again, or just walk down a wood plank sidewalk as a body comes flying through the swinging doors of a saloon.
I’ll let you know how it goes.