By Howard McGillin

I was majoring in history at UC Santa Barbara, when I heard about auditions for the summer season at the Sacramento Music Circus. I had chosen my major in a futile attempt to appease my mother. Why didn't I listen to her? Stubborn to the end, I joined a few friends and drove to Los Angeles for the audition and was hired for the season. I appeared in seven musicals in eight weeks at the Music Circus, one of the last summer stock tents in operation in the country. For eight wonderful weeks I played an assortment of singing hotel clerks, sailors and butlers and got my first taste of professional theatre. I was hooked. The first show of the season was a wonderful production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS and starred Joanne Worley, Jane Connell, Gordon Connell and Henry Gibson. I returned to the University that Fall to complete my degree, but I'd been "bitten by the bug" and never looked back.