I joined OGMC in the fall of 2019 – just in time to perform in the holiday concert before COVID. What a joy to finally be back together again in this fall of 2021!
I’ve been fascinated by theatre and music ever since I can remember. As a kid in Southern California I had a wooden orange crate in my bedroom that I had turned into a stagehouse. It was on its side, and I could fly sets through the spaces between the slats and move little figures around on the “stage” for rehearsals or performances. My mom rigged up a scalloped curtain on the proscenium arch for the “grand drape.”
As a present for my eighth birthday my parents surprised me by dyeing some sheets purple and creating stage curtains over in one corner of the garage. With my 78rpm record player “backstage” to provide the music, my friends and I would put on shows for ourselves and sometimes for our oh-so-lucky parents.
In fifth grade I had the tremendous good fortune of having Mrs. Edna Garberg as my teacher. She had a background in theatre, and she encouraged me to write a play, “The Wild Ride of Mr. Toad,” which the class then produced and presented. Years and years later, when I was a student at the University of Heidelberg, Mrs. Garberg came to Germany for a visit: We took in as many German theater productions as we could during that week!
My family lived on Okinawa from 1960 to 1962. It was during my freshman year in high school that my algebra teacher recommended me to an Okinawan samisen master, who had taught a blind man to play and was now in the market for an American guinea pig. For the next year-and-a-half I took samisen lessons with Mr. Yamashiro and eventually appeared on Okinawan radio and TV. Heady stuff for a 15-year-old!
One summer in college I performed with San Diego Civic Light Opera (Starlight Opera), but my next “serious” stage work wasn’t until I had finished graduate school and was gainfully employed as a college librarian. I joined the Lamplighters, San Francisco’s Gilbert and Sullivan troupe, where I met my future husband (Richard McCall) in a production of Pirates of Penzance. We moved to Berkeley, named our big Mission Revival style house Penzance, and hosted lots of cast parties. Rich and I were together for 38 years before his death.
When Rich and I retired and moved to Sebastopol, I enrolled as a theatre arts major at Santa Rosa J.C. It was my first formal training. A couple years later I also completed the ACT Summer Training Congress. Sonoma County had a vibrant theatre scene, but after Rich’s death I chose to return to the more immediate Bay Area, where I found a wonderful, bayfront condo in Alameda. I was playing roles all over the Bay Area (CalShakes, San Jose Stage, Stanford) until my aunt’s health deteriorated to the point where I needed to spend more time with her in Southern California, and I couldn’t commit to long rehearsal and performance schedules. That’s when I discovered OGMC! The one weekly rehearsal worked perfectly!
A couple months into the pandemic my 99-year-old aunt passed away (not from COVID). I inherited her three 17-year-old cats and spent lots of pandemic lockdown time with them here in Alameda, looking out at the bay. Other than our OGMC “Love is All that Matters” video, my big artistic adventure during that period was singing virtually with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.
Nowadays I’m president of my homeowners’ association; it’s kind of an interesting gig. Then, on Fridays I love commuting by ferry over to San Francisco to volunteer in the ACT Library. Still, most of all I am soooooo happy to be singing again in person with the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus in our wonderful new quarters at Oakland First Pres! The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.
