Welcome to my Substack...

...I'm here to spill my guts!

As a kid, I was a prolific actress, a singer and writer. I didn’t dance, 1) because I had zero coordination and 2) because my older sister Tara danced professionally with the Washington, DC School of the Ballet and I was UBER competitive.

I wasn’t willing to be less talented or less of a star than my sister.

So instead, I acted and sang in local theater groups and even with a professional children’s group CUE: Children’s Urban Arts Ensemble, in which I was the only White person in an all-Black group. It was cool - we performed at the Kennedy Center with the late Malcolm Jamal Warner, at National Theater, Gallaudet and Howard University, and we sang and acted scenes from esteemed musicals such as Purlie, Raisin, Dreamgirls, the Whiz, Annie (in which I played Miss Hannigan, teetering on 6-inch platform heels and nearly keeling into the audience), and ye olde favorite, Christmas in Cabbage Patch Land.

What? You haven’t heard of that last one?

Some readers may recall that back in 1983, Cabbage Patch Kids were so popular, folks were lining up to buy them at stores the way kids today do for the latest hot sneaker drop. And why not capitalize on the hottest kid trend with a ridiculous kid musical starring those creepy dolls that came with their own cabbage-patch birth certificates?

Here’s a photo of me getting ready backstage for the show:

No, I’m not Raggedy Ann. I’m a Cabbage Patch Kid! M’kay?!

Funny, my memory of past events has giant gaping holes in it. But to this day, I STILL REMEMBER the solo tap dance from Christmas in Cabbagepatch Land.

Every. Single. Step.

Okay, earlier when I said I didn’t dance because of Tara? I meant I didn’t do BALLET. I did get pretty deep into tap dance as a kid. I watched Gregory Hines, Gene Kelley and little Shirley Temple movies over and over, mesmerized, and I terrorized my family for years with my “shuffle off to buffalo” mantra.

Around that time, out of school with the flu, I wrote an entire musical. When I completed the libretto, my imagination went wild with images of me becoming the next mini James Rado/Gerome Radni with the assured success of my play on Broadway.

Sadly all my dreams were dashed the next day when I realized I had plagiarized Annie.

Hold up. You don’t know who James Rado & Gerome Radni are?

Fine, I’ll coddle your Google-lazy ass and tell you: they are the writers of the best musical ever-ever!

The musical Hair!

Go watch the movie right now and get back to me.

My very own libretto from when I directed the show

Here are 4 photos from the production of Hair I directed at Yale:

Clockwise from top left: the actors in their Hari Krishna scene, the actors in their hippie maypole scene, our rapt audience, the tattooed director herself (me), wearing my dad’s red, white & blue jeans from the actual 60’s that I cut into shorts.

I’m not posting any photos of when the cast stripped naked during “Let the Sunshine In," nor of when we ALL got nekkid after the finale, but you can DM me if you want to see them.

(Spoiler alert for the pervs who message me: I ain’t showing you those photos.)

Bless my dad who held onto this! Why wasn’t I more of a hoarder???😭

I’ve lost track of the video of the show, but blessedly it never found its way into the hands of any of my four kids thanks to this being the prehistoric pre-YouTube pre-Internet days.

Did I mention I have four kids?

Also, I was married for twenty years, until 2022. Also, for the years I was married, I lived as an Orthodox Jew. Kept Kosher, covered my hair, and strictly observed the Sabbath.

I’ll give you one guess as to whether I stayed or strayed from that path. (Hint: Here’s me now)

PS I have no idea how to re-size these photos, even though the Substack help video swears I should just be able to grab the edge of a photo & drag it to make it smaller. It did not work.

I’m interpreting it as a not so subtle whisper from the Universe:

GO BIG OR GO HOME, DAHLING!!!

Buckle up.