So I spent a lot of my childhood in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital.

In a neighborhood that was filled with all of these amazingly creative kids, like I'm

not kidding for real creative, for example, one of them was Margaret Edson, who went on

to win a Pulitzer Prize for the play WIT. Yes, I shit you not. We played all kinds of

make-believe games all of the time on our street, and by the time I was 9 or 10, I'd already

decided to be an actress. It was around that time that we kids started a proper theater company.

I mean, you know, we thought it was a proper theater company. We called it the university players.

We like that name because it conveyed a certain gravitas upon our group of six or seven

elementary school performers with absolutely no experience of any kind.

One of the first shows in our extensive repertoire was a production of Sorry Wrong Number,

which was a super scary murder thriller. Okay, we charged our parents a dollar to come down to

their own basement to see the premiere performance, and I got to tell you it was a magnificent show.

I played Mrs. Stevenson, the lead role that was originated by Barbara Stanwick in the movie

for you film buffs out there, and I believe that in every way I outshown Ms. Stanwick, at least

that's how I remember it. So opening night, which was also closing night, the show was going great

until my five-year-old neighbor, Michael, who was playing one of the exceptionally scary murderers,

he messed up a line. And as an actress, of course, I was completely professional, I held it together,

but as a producer of this production, I was livid. I was absolutely furious.

Still, other than Michael's massive fuck up, it was perfection. We were very dedicated

Thespians, and I just I loved it so much. So much that I really never stopped performing.

Back then, you know, performance was just an element of our playing. Everything was make believe.

We lived across the street from American University in DC, and so our little pack of nine

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