Aw, don’t worry. I know I have misspelled “reacting.” A scholar once said, “It’s fine to trample all over the English language as long as I know the difference.” I do. My “re-acting’ is about acting again.

Today I’m wondering if I will ever appear in a stage production again. It’s been a few years since I was on stage. Yes, during that time I’ve done a number of character appearances as Batman, the Green Hornet, and Ben Kenobi for various children’s charities. Granted, it’s kind of acting on a small but important scale. And over the last ten years or so, I’ve had the privilege of bringing life to a variety of interesting characters in many productions. Now I am truly at a crossroads.

After many series of acting opportunities in the Chicago area, two major things happened.

First, big health challenges. Trouble with a worsening birth defect in a heart valve caused my doctor to advise me I was in some danger and to pull out of a play in rehearsal plus anything else that might stress my heart. I didn’t have a choice, but I let people down and I hate that.

After open-heart surgery to replace my faulty aortic valve and a year of recovery, I got better and felt able to return to acting. Yet in that year after the major heart surgery, I fell in our steeply sloped front yard, breaking my right arm and shoulder (and planting my face in a large anthill). This led to reverse total shoulder replacement surgery. As hairy as it sounds! Acting on the shelf again. After several months of physical therapy, I believed I was ready to give it another try. I was asked to join a cast in a production written and directed by a couple of people I had worked with before and really respected. I was eager to do it and agreed before the script was ready.

When rehearsals began, it was quickly clear my shoulder wasn’t ready. I was cast in two one-act plays in this production. It turned out both brought simple physical challenges I simply wasn’t ready for. The directors were willing to make adjustments to help me, but it looked to me like these changes caused some of the writers’ vision for their stories to be lost. I didn’t want to do that. I backed out of my roles during rehearsals. Again, I hated doing this. Hated it very much.

Today though, my heart and shoulder are fine, working well. No falls, no anthills. I haven’t been offered any other roles and neither have I auditioned for any roles. The producers and directors may well think I can no longer be counted on. I can’t blame them. That brings me to number two.

Second, I moved away. My first marriage ended in divorce about ten years ago, right as my acting opportunities were increasing. I found a genuine sense of community within the theater groups. It really helped me cope with everything. It was a valuable time, and I loved the people and my variety of roles.

A couple of years later I met someone who would become my wife. My sense of community rightfully shifted to Patty and her world. Not much later, I retired from 29 years at the same company. Retired, I have more time to visit my far-flung kiddos and grandkiddos (it’s still not all that easy to get away, but we’re trying). Patty and I lived in Schaumburg, Illinois but we also had a home in Galena, Illinois, Patty’s hometown.

We had been splitting time between the two places but after I retired, we decided to sell our Schaumburg house. Galena, some two and a half hours from Chicago, became my hometown. It’s taken me a little while to adapt to retirement and small-town living, but it’s going very well. We’ve begun to get involved in the community here in Galena. Yet this move obviously makes involvement in any Chicago-area theater productions almost impossible. Just over a year now in Galena, I’m still mourning (a bit) the connections and the acting opportunities I have lost.

That makes me 0 for 2. My acting stock fell because of my health issues, and then I moved away.

The whole situation has caused me to reflect on what acting means to me. I’m not even sure I’m good at it. I’ve long guessed I get cast only because I’m loud and unafraid. I do think acting is something that uses all my gifts and abilities. It’s a real power outlet for me. When I get involved in a play, I always look for ways to contribute other than my acting role. Props, costumes, a little improv, etc. I do have other non-theater opportunities to plug in to power but acting was a significant part of my life for quite a while.

Acting. I’ve been at it on and off since high school. Mostly off that far back. A high school play, “Cinderella,” was really my first on-stage experience. It was the familiar story rewritten as an outright comedy. As the Prince’s Messenger, I had a particularly comedic role. I loved it. I was a senior. I remember being sad I hadn’t acted at all in my first three years of high school.  

Only about a year later, I was a young Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. My battalion commander sent me and a few other Marines to be extras in the Hollywood movie, “Baby Blue Marine,” starring Jan-Michael Vincent. My mom got a big kick out of seeing me on the big screen. My best scene ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I was sad about that, but I got paid and best of all, we got to eat from the Hollywood catering trucks after the stars finished. That was good.

After that, many years passed with no “official” acting. Well, there was a time or two when I got in costume to promote my costume rental shop while in college at Indiana University. I especially liked wearing our gorilla suit while riding my motorcycle through town carrying a “Rent Me at Prank Palace” sign.

Years went by with no acting at all. Yet those years were filled with much time speaking and teaching in front of groups of people on a number of subjects. I think my involvement in these events and acting might just come from the same personal skill bucket.

My return to the stage came at a critical time in my life. It started when a friend at work talked about her involvement in community theater and encouraged me to audition. In my personal life, we had just moved to a new town and that left me with no real friends, no connections. My kids were all grown and on their own. As it often happens in this situation, trouble surfaced in my long-term marriage.

On the advice of a friend at work, I auditioned and was cast as Rev. William Miller, a real-life preacher from the 1900’s who was known for sincerely thinking he had predicted the end of the world. This role was a 21-minute monologue. No other actors involved. Just me the rookie in this one-act play, part of a group of one-act plays about the end of the world. I had a blast. I thoroughly enjoyed reading a biography of Rev. Miller. I also put together a close-to-period correct costume. By the end of the show run, the cast of the other one-acts started to call me “reverend” and “preacher.” Those I considered to be high compliments. And I also began to get acquainted with some people.

This was followed by some 15 to 20 other roles. My favorites are Judge (Colonel) Julius Randolph, USMC in “A Few Good Men,” Dr. William Chumley in “Harvey,” and a dual role as a British game show host and an LAPD surfer dude detective.

I consider my involvement in “A Few Good Men” my best effort. As a Marine veteran, I also had the role of military advisor for the production. That was an incredible experience for me. Being a part of that show was a bucket list cross-off for sure.

I loved “Harvey” so much I auditioned for it in two different theater companies (not at the same time!) I wanted and got the role of Dr. William Chumley, head of the psychiatric institution where Elwood P. Dowd and his six-foot tall invisible rabbit Harvey landed. Dr. Chumley was really two roles. First, he was a tyrant lording over his institution and its rules. Then he meets Elwood, and in time, Harvey. Things radically changed for the good doctor and soon he was confessing his desire to go to Akron and meet a woman there who wouldn’t talk much. I’d highly recommend you search for the Jimmy Stuart “Harvey” movie.

“A Very Grady Murder” was easily the most fun for me as an actor. I had two roles in this murder mystery dinner theater but the audience didn’t know that. It was a game show setting, with me as the British host (think Richard Dawson), and the contestants were a take-off on “The Brady Bunch.” About the halfway mark, I was killed and carted off. Or was I? Backstage I transformed into a surfer dude LAPD detective Dan Dean investigating my own murder. I got to learn two completely different accents, British and surfer dude. No hodad here! Great fun! The twist was that me, the British host, didn’t die at all as the audience thought, but became the surfer dude detective. A big delight to me was that several in the audience had no idea both characters were me!

Lots of other roles were a lot of fun as well.

What’s next? I’m not sure. There are theater groups in Galena, Dubuque, and other nearby towns. I’ve started researching them and I’m considering trying to audition for something. It’s hard to break in as an outsider.

Re-acting? I might try. In fact, I just found out yesterday there may be a role for me in an upcoming production. After all, I am loud and unafraid.