IN THE BEGINNING,

Acting was just speaking someone else’s words in order, with a modicum of feeling. When I made my theatre debut in The Laramie Project as a wee college freshman, I really thought I was going to die onstage. It just didn’t seem possible to survive an entire show — in front of an audience!

But I didn’t die, and it got easier to stand before the gaze of an audience the more I did it. Turns out, that’s a big part of the acting thing. The other big part? Being truthful.

And that’s it. That’s the secret to acting: acting truthfully under imaginary circumstances, in the gaze of an audience!

Simple, really. Not easy.

It’s why I apprenticed at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, why I spent two years being challenged beyond my wildest imagination at the University of Houston’s PATP. It’s also why that MFA is not enough. Every show is an opportunity to train. To be more precise open visceral relentless light generous quick relaxed joyous violent.

To be more human, with other humans, under imaginary circumstances. In front of an audience.

So if that sounds like something that gets your motor going, then let’s play.