Why This?

I was in my first acting class in the 7th grade.  My 2nd class, 8th grade.  Boulan Park Middle School in Troy, Michigan. That year marked my 1st appearance in a full-length play at school.  Off the Track and I was Pidgin Mcdougall.  I carried around this bird cage with a fake bird, and when one of the other actors was very late for an entrance I made up a bunch of stories and kept right on talking to another actor on stage as if it were the easiest most natural thing in the world.  The audience laughed.  I basked.  Afterwards, parents came up to me and told me how good I was.  In the parking lot and walking back to the car with my parents I declared THIS, this is what I wanted to do when I grew up.  Act.  Perform. That was it.  I knew.  THAT turned into passion and focus for being in front of an audience, and morphed into this, THIS, audiobook narrating.  Because it doesn't matter to me who the audience is, whether it's 2,000 members sitting in an auditorium watching me on stage, a film set crew in the room as I perform on camera, directors, advertising execs and engineers on the other side of the glass as I voice over copy behind the mic, or just me, myself and I performing for YOU, the listener, behind the microphone in my home recording booth.  In all instances, I am performing, and my talent that I have been gifted with to share is YOURS.  So you see, audiobook narration is an extension of my sharing my gifts, my talent of storytelling, becoming another person using my experiences and emotions to create time and place and take the audience to another place, to entertain, to have fun.  And how fortunate I am to call THIS work!