Where Is Love OLIVER !

An Actor Unprepared

I was a failure as a professional actor despite being brilliant, brilliant at least in my own mind. What was the hubris? Perhaps the narcissism inherited from or modeled by my mother. Was it an Oedipal desire to please mother by pursuing the path denied to her?

            My first theatrical performance was the annual extravaganza produced by Miss Leadbetter’s Country Day School in Richardson, Texas. I was the lead skunk. Whenever company was over and I was invariably asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I said, “be one of those guys on television who comes out from behind the curtain, sings a song, tells a joke, and sits down on the couch to chat.” Such desire for the limelight from a young boy nicknamed by his father: “Squirrel.” (There’s a story there but not in the foreword).

What I thought was the seed of destiny took root in the fertile soil of the Camp Darby community theatre in the fall of 1968. Within that company of players, I was cast as Oliver, in the musical rendition of Dickens’ classic, Oliver Twist. The story of an orphan boy searching for love. The boy who wanted more. My first incarnation of character and self.
            One night singing Oliver’s solo, “Where is Love?” I had an epiphany, a revelation, so to speak. To set the stage, I was in the actor zone, I was a conduit of lyrics, melody and meaning—it was my “aha” moment. It was a moment of grace, a pure expression of the deep longing that lies within to love and be loved. The audience was hushed and silent as I lingered on the final note.  All were encompassed it seemed by this fleeting moment of beatitude.
            Then the audience applauded. I would say they rose to their feet with a thunderous ovation, but that would be stretching truth too far, literally speaking. Suffice to say, that I was showered with praise and adoration, but it was the moment of grace itself that was the intoxication. For the briefest of time, a moment perhaps, I was suspended in the void between the conscious and the unconscious. I was the character, and the character was me. As a great American playwright wrote of his seafaring youth, his self-portrait in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Edmund, a role I once played well, “I belonged without past or future within peace and unity, a wild joy, within something greater than my own or the life of man. To God if you want to put it that way.”  
            Heady stuff for a runt who cried too much and wet his bed. A boy of small frame, buck-toothed with only an acid tongue for defense—a boy “too smart for his own good” and “a child born angry”.  The latter according to my maternal grandmother, and the former, my mother. 
            When the time was ripe, I proclaimed to my father that I “would make it as an actor, and if not that, be a bum.”  And the latter came close to occurring but for another awakening, the “pesto” insight which I shall recount in full later. The moment I realized I was worse than a bum, I was a waiter, worser than that, I was a catering waiter. I was also a newlywed with a wife ready for child and the clock was ticking. I was never going to be able to provide for a family on an actor's salary. I still have the pay stubs of the meager earnings of my professional acting pursuits. And so, I asked myself a daunting question? What does a thirty-four-year-old actor, barely eking by on simple wages and tips do now? I was self-admitted as being ill-suited for white-collar starch. I was ill-prepared and lacking any skill set with which to enter the "real" world much less command a salary with benefits? A BFA in theatre with a minor in English from the University of Nebraska (Lincoln) and an incomplete master’s degree in acting and directing from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) left me mostly unprepared for success in any business save the one I was then foreswearing.
            To make a long story brief, the answer to my riddle proved to be audiobook publishing.  I learned the business from the ground up, front-to-back, and side to side in the Wild West days of abridged retail audio, circa 1990-2000. And then another 20 years until the industry matured and started making money.

Excerpted from the author preface, An Actor Unprepared (or The Other Editor) (c)2022 by Joe B. McNeely Jr. 

Johnny Rivers - Secret Agent Man + Lyrics