Before I was making headlines, I was making sets in summer stock theater

Summertime.When all good wives go to the country and all bad husbands go to their girlfriends.For young people a warm weather activity is summer stock — such an education that sometimes you even learn acting.

One season I had five major roles and two minor affairs.I didn’t end up the best actress — but I was the happiest.The first season I just apprenticed.

Clearly, I was no four-star super-talented Piper Laurie.I made scenery, polished flats, scrubbed dressing rooms, built furniture.

Come Labor Day I was ready for my future — as a professional home wrecker.That year our company was so talented that three apprentices landed jobs: two as cabinet makers and one as an interior decorator.I was told that to achieve success, one must struggle.

However, the connection between cleaning latrines and stardom still escapes me.Summer stock then was barns, haylofts, an occasional building, often a mudhole.Bats, bugs, worms and fields had more space than the players.Straw-hat revues booked urban talent at suburban prices in exurban areas.

Nothing’s as great as “Hamlet” in Pittsburgh, Tennessee Williams off a hayloft or the aroma of “King Lear” in a cow barn.Today everybody does barns.Look soon for Fauci to play Julius Caesar in Detroit.Many pros use Eastgunk as a proving ground.

Venues so crowded with old-timers there’s no room for newcomers.By the time young’uns get a shot they’re already old-timers.

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Never miss a story.Actresses occasionally smell that a real producer is out front just a proscenium away.

She figures this is her chance.Actually it was her figure that was her chance.

Little does she know he’s hibernating.He’s locked himself up in the whiskey closet, won’t come out until November.The season I semi-slayed the audience was the ...