How I Got My Equity Card

I got my Equity card because I got a job in a Broadway play a few weeks after I finished college.

I received my Equity Card after being cast as the frst actor on the spectrum to play Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Indiana Repertory Theatre and Syracuse Stage, which also made me one of the frst actors on the spectrum to play any autistic character ever.

Less than a year after graduating from college, I heard about an open audition for a tour of Forever Plaid. I expected it to be just a good audition experience. But after crooning “Stranger in Paradise,” I got offered a role and, with it, my Equity card. I couldn’t believe it. To me, the words “Actors’ Equity” were like magical words from a fairy-tale dream, like “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” or “abracadabra” or “Ashley Judd.”

In 1947, the brilliant designer Robert Edmond Jones introduced me to John Huntington, who was the producer of the [now closed] Cambridge Summer Theatre in Massachusetts. It was my first job. I cleaned the men's room and did props and played very small parts.

I began my acting career working for two of the most remarkable people in the American theatre: husband and wife team Julian Beck and Judith Malina, co-founders of The Living Theatre. The Becks, as they were affectionately known, were radical Jewish intellectual artists and pacifists deeply committed to peace and social justice through non-violent political activism, and The Living Theatre was a clear reflection of their ideals for which they paid dearly with frequent arrests, incarcerations and fines.

I got my Equity card at Dallas Summer Musicals playing Ma Templeton in a stock tour of George M! with Ken Berry. I had accrued 14 memberships the year before, but received my card outright at DSM.

After teaching dramatics for a year after college, I auditioned for Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. When I was politely rejected, after running through five pieces, I signed up for a course at The Catholic University of America in order to be eligible to try out for its productions.

I had just moved to New York in September of 1976. I was prepared to allow myself six months to get acclimated, so I wasn’t worried about finding a job right away. One day, I came home and had a message from this casting director. Since I didn’t know any casting directors yet, I was pretty surprised.

In the '60s, I did a lot of television and I was quite well known from Sing Along with Mitch on CBS. I got a call to audition for a new Broadway musical called Hallelujah, Baby!, which was written by Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.