Sunday, October 6, 2013

Out, damned spot!


My mom took me to see The Sound of Music when I was about 10 years old. Later that day she noticed me moping around the house. When she asked what was wrong I burst into tears and said, “I want to be an actress!”

That same year I fell in love with Shakespeare and used to memorize whole speeches, pretending I was Beatrice giving Benedict a run for his money or Helena chasing after Demetrius into the forest.

While I have yet to pursue a career on stage or screen, I think the impulse to create fictional characters on the page is akin to acting. As a writer, you can imagine what it's like to be a detective, as Kate Atkinson does in her Jackson Brody mysteries, or a boy who impulsively quits his grocery store job, as John Updike did in his story "A & P."

My latest story is about two sisters living in a fictional country during a fictional war, and while I was writing it I was immersed in those characters and that world. (You can read “All the Sweet and Beautiful Boys” at   http://themiloreview.com/all-the-sweet-and-beautiful-boys/.)
As for my theatrical ambitions, I’m a bit past the age where I could play one of the singing von Trapp children or the lead in a Shakespearean comedy, but Lady Macbeth is still a possibility….

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