Warning: What follows is completely self-indulgent and is of no value to most people. If you continue reading you must be really bored and you do so being forewarned.

As some of you may know, I am by day the sales manager for a (really, really cool) software company. No names needed. But for the past several weeks I have, under cover of the night, assumed an alternate identity, that of a perspiring Shakespearean actor. Uh, I meant “aspiring.” Not that I truly aspire, mind you. The words “Don’t quit your day job” were uttered with me in mind.

I am a middle-aged man, whose dreams of being “discovered” have long since faded. But I WAS a theatre major at New York University in Greenwich Village a million years ago. I appeared in several off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway plays, back in the day. Two versions of No Exit, Genet’s Deathwatch, an original adaptation of Wedekind’s Lulu and many original plays. It has been more than sixteen years since I did anything more serious than children’s theatre.

A couple of months ago, I met Kate Mendeloff at a Passover dinner. I was introduced as the founder of the Jewish Cultural Society’s theatre group. (No one mentioned that my last opus was performed by the third-grade Sunday school class.) Kate asked if I would be interested in performing in a Shakespeare play. Now, for those who don’t know much about The Bard, Shakespeare was quite a hell-raiser in his day. In fact his buddy Burbage was recovering from an all-night party when Bill gave him the draft of Hamlet to read. In other words, my kind of guy! I said “Sure!” not knowing that I would soon find myself rehearsing to play Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing. I work with a wonderfully talented cast of young college students, whose skills are good enough to cover my inadequacies. But, who cares? It’s Shakespeare! “The plays the thing to catch the conscience of the King!”

We perform out in the Arboretum, a wonderful rolling park in Ann Arbor. The play allows the college kids to get in front of an audience and raises money for the park. It is a win-win situation. If you are in town Thursday through Sunday night, the first three weekends in June, be sure to come by. Shows start at 6:30, though we ask you to claim your tickets at 5:30. That’s PM, for you all-nighters.

Truly, my performance is … adequate. I remember now why I didn’t become an actor. I wasn’t good enough. But, my brothers and sisters, there are some moments when the moon is in alignment and stars are just right and this middle-aged man’s voice fills an empty field and the magic works! How lucky I am that I can say the words of The Bard and make them my own, if only for a moment.

I am truly blessed that my kids will be able to see me act. And I can share with the college students in the cast my experiences and teach them what little I know. (Lesson Number One being “Don’t upstage The Koop!”) It is great fun and truly I feel young again. Then I wake up in the morning to go to work and my back hurts. Well, the description of Leonato is “with gray hairs and bruise of many days” so it fits.

Many of my friends in this community have supported my efforts and I thank them. Let me conclude by saying that if you are lucky enough to have a dream, follow it!