growing up with endstation...

at 23 years of age, i like to think that i've grown up. i'm an adult now. i make all the right decisions. i'm done learning, time to start doing. i'm now the person i'll be for the rest of my life.

well, for three years now, i've returned to sweet briar for endstation theatre company's blue ridge summer theatre festival and each summer i discover i have so much left to learn. i've been looking back at all the photographs and videos of my time spent here in virginia and sometimes i don't even recognize myself.

as an actor, i'm moving around a lot. i've spent time just about everywhere but i might as well have been nowhere. the only constant in the past three years, has been summer. throughout the year, i don't know where i'm working, where i'm living, what i'm eating, or who i'll see along the way. but when the month of may rolls along, i know exactly what i'm getting...

every summer...

i book a flight to raleigh, north carolina where my parent's now live. i never get to visit so i take the opportunity to spend a week with them (but in all actuality, i live in their house, and spend every waking minute on the back patio doing script analysis for the upcoming shakespeare production at endstation.) when the week is through, we load up the SUV with all my bags (i always overpack for my summers with endstation) and drive 3.5 hours north to Lynchburg and stop in at the white hart for a fitzwilliam sandwich and their macaroni and cheese. we then drive the remaining 25 minutes into amherst and i unload my trunks into the upstairs bedroom in the kershner house (the one with the leonardo ninja turtle poster over the bed). every summer, i stay the first week or two at the kershner house until our housing is secured and ready on campus. i'm allergic to cats (they have two) but the pros FAR outweigh the cons. i will always have memories of nancy kershner and her home-cooked meals. her freshly brewed iced tea with home-grown stevia, mint, and lemon will be with me forever. every morning i share a pot of coffee with dr. bill kershner and we yabber on (like the geeky academics we are) throughout the morning about the history and the future of the american theatre.

all of this takes place in just the first two weeks, but it unfolds in exactly the same way every summer and i cherish this.

and well, after i leave the kershner house, the summer reveals itself in much the same way.

i've spent the last three years knowing, that every summer, i receive a rare opportunity to learn more about myself. as an actor, as a teacher, and as a human being.

it all started with Romeo & Juliet and The Bluest Water...

it continued with A Midsummer Night's Dream and... The Bluest Water...

and now it continues yet again in much the same way

(and yet always different and unique)

with Hamlet and The Complete Works...

and i don't know about you, but i'm excited.

m.