It just wasn’t worth it. After more than 30 years of acting onstage, I was done. No matter how low stakes, no matter how small the role, the pre-performance anxiety and post-performance crash were no longer worth the fleeting (yet extraordinary) high of being onstage.

When I made this decision I was far away from the stages of New York, to which I aspired through 14 years of professional theatre training, and on which I briefly appeared. Community theatre was definitely not where I expected my career to take me, but a good actor respects any (paying) audience and the folks at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center in Lexington, Kentucky were no less deserving of a good performance than those at the Lincoln Center in New York.

For a wannabe character actor, this was as good as it got. Two short yet significant scenes, one in each of the play’s two acts. No obligation to maintain the show’s energy or carry the full weight of the production’s success on my shoulders. I had a couple of decent speeches, a few solid laugh lines, and a sharp suit for a costume.