BWW SPECIAL FEATURE: How I Got My Equity Card - by Howard McGillin

BroadwayWorld.com is proud to present its newest weekly feature, presented in association with and to celebrate the importance of the Actors' Equity Association. "AEA" or "Equity", founded in 1913, is the labor union that represents more than 48,000 Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Equity seeks to advance, promote and foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of our society. Equity negotiates wages and working conditions and provides a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans, for its members.

Check back weekly for new entries from stars of stage and screen on how they got their Equity cards!

I was majoring in history at UC Santa Barbara, when I heard about auditions for the summer season at the Sacramento Music Circus. I had chosen my major in a futile attempt to appease my mother. Why didn't I listen to her? Stubborn to the end, I joined a few friends and drove to Los Angeles for the audition and was hired for the season.

I appeared in seven musicals in eight weeks at the Music Circus, one of the last summer stock tents in operation in the country. For eight wonderful weeks I played an assortment of singing hotel clerks, sailors and butlers and got my first taste of professional theatre. I was hooked.

The first show of the season was a wonderful production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS and starred Joanne Worley, Jane Connell, Gordon Connell and Henry Gibson. I returned to the University that Fall to complete my degree, but I'd been "bitten by the bug" and never looked back.

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Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.