Something could have flown into my eye as I walked past the poster that said Upcoming Auditions. A loud plane could have flown overhead, or I could have noticed my shoe was untied, but none of these things happened. So I saw the poster, turned on my heel that very instant, and headed straight for the theatre department.

My rationalization was: I wasn't going to audition. No! I was merely going to sign up for an audition, so that I might borrow the play, and spend this lovely October afternoon reading by the fountain.

“No one was going to cast me in Chekhov, but even I might be able to handle Neil Simon.”

I was kidding myself. I might have auditioned under any circumstances, but in fact one of the roles seemed absolutely tailor-made to my type -- the gawky Jew. And the play was funny and conversational -- no one was going to cast me in Chekhov, but even I might be able to handle Neil Simon.

So I kept the appointment, held in the cavernous main theatre. And while I had never been through an audition process, I knew early on that I was going to win the role. I could read the energy waves, or hear the way the director spoke to me, and I knew he was talking himself into giving me the role. Which he did. I was standing on the stage with several other actors, and the director said in general, "Well, we have our Arnold and our Selridge." And that actor and I turned and shook hands. I was to play Arnold Epstein, the rebellious Jewish kid whose conflict with the drill sergeant is the play's sub-plot.

And then the director said to me, "You realize you are going to have to get a crew cut." I walked into that audition with my hair down to my shoulders, believing myself to be quite the non-conformist. A crew cut? As a matter of fact, I had not realized this -- that would have required my giving this whole matter any thought at all. But belonging to a largely imaginary group of long-haired non-conformists was conveying no benefit whatsoever; belonging to the theatre might prove more useful. I said "Yes" without any hesitation.

Rehearsals began, and I was just terrible. Honestly, embarrassingly bad. The stronger the feeling my character needed to emote, the more off-the-graph my overreaching. Simple, conversational lines I managed okay, but I had several scenes where I was supposed to be angry or sad, and here I would do everything short of putting on the classic "tragedy" mask to show the depths of my feeling.

And, well, why not? It's not like I had ever been in a play before.

My saving grace, and the key to what has to be called my success in this acting debut, was two-fold: (a) I did not know I was bad, and so I tra-la-la-ed merrily through the rehearsal process, having a fine old time; and (b) the audience, God bless 'em, would prove to be undemanding in the extreme.

“Rehearsals began and I was just terrible. Honestly, embarrassingly bad.”

So I fooled around up there on the stage through four weeks of rehearsals, and I learned my lines and all of the blocking. The idea of actually performing this play in front of 500 people was a distant, hazy notion -- a 30-page term paper due weeks from now. Yes, we're going to have to worry about it, but not today. Let's just sit back and enjoy this cozy theatre atmosphere! Ahhhh.

There were a few signs that perhaps the stage was not my home. For one thing, I, the actor, would laugh at jokes that I, the character, said onstage. Especially if someone was watching from the audience -- if that person laughed, I might laugh, too. This is bad form, and thankfully I was able to break this habit by the time a real audience filled those seats. (Of course, on opening night, I was so filled with shock and terror that the idea of laughing was completely out of the question. As we shall see.)

Also, I had one quick change that was simply impossible. And it really was impossible, even in retrospect. At the time, however, I felt that my inability to complete the change, even with the help of two dressers, revealed me for what I was -- a complete amateur -- and it rankled. We ran it again and again: At the end of the one scene, the lights abruptly blacked out -- hundreds of lights, all going dark at once -- and I was left alone on stage, blind and bedazzled. Nonetheless, I was to find my way off-stage, where Dresser #1 would seize my arm and drag me like a child's pull toy, behind a scrim and across the full length of the stage to the other wing. With my free hand, I was already trying to unbutton my shirt. Upon reaching the other side of the stage, she and Dresser #2 would begin the actual change: Each dresser would take a foot, and between the two of them they would get off my army boots -- real army boots! laced to the ankles! -- while I finished getting off my shirt. Then the pants would come off. Then I would have to get into a different pair of pants, then make my way out on to the stage, where the lights would come up, and there I would be, discovered, mere moments after the lights had blacked out on the previous scene.

I was never discovered. The lights would come up on an empty stage. The character I was to be conversing with would enter from the opposite wing, and, finding nobody to chat with, would go about some business or other until I finally managed to get out there.

Surely there must have been another way to do this.

But it's funny how aggravated I got over my inability to complete a basically impossible task -- Superman himself would have had difficulty with this quick-change -- whereas my lack of acting skills bothered me not at all.

“I felt that my inability to complete the quick change revealed me for what I was: a complete amateur.”

Perhaps the most important tool missing from my actor's toolkit was my voice. One must project to the back of the house, and for me this basically amounted to yelling. But just because you're audible doesn't mean you're doing the job right, and I found that out in the most dramatic possible way:

I awoke on the morning of opening night with a pleasant fluttery nervousness. My roommate had left the night before to visit his brother at another college, and I lay there in the quiet morning stillness trying to get my mind around the fact that I would be on-stage in army fatigues in a mere twelve hours, performing for hundreds.

In between now and then, however, I had my usual Friday line-up of classes, including Communications 101. I had figured the textbook would have phrases like "Chapter 3: The Telephone," and as usual my expectations and reality resided on totally different planets. The communications professor was, in fact, completely indecipherable. But he was also a bear about attendance, so there was no question of my skipping class. I got up, showered, dug out some clothes, turned on the radio, found a good song, and opened my mouth to sing along.

And then the world simply ended.

Which of us does not have burned into his memory the exact moment in which some piece of horrific news makes itself clear? Your dog is dead in the next room, but you still get up rarin' to greet the day. It isn't until you open the door that you suddenly understand what kind of day you're going to have. And while the rest of that day may become a blur, the moment of transition becomes a permanent scar.

Nearly fifteen years later, I can still relive the moment. Standing at my closet, looking for something clean to wear, thinking nothing in particular, but when my mouth opens to sing along with the radio, I get nothing but a nasty, raspy hack. And barely that. Almost nothing at all emerges from my mouth. It would not have surprised me if a wisp of smoke floated out from my larynx, like a cartoon dragon hit with a seltzer bottle.

I am frozen, blinking, uncomprehending. I try again, LALALALALA!!, but nothing. No sound! I could not begin to grasp the physics of this event. Go to bed after chatting amiably with friends, wake up the next morning with no voice whatsoever? How was this possible? My mind refused to accept it, kept pushing back the unacceptable information. Bad signal, please try later. Meanwhile, I was staring in the mirror, watching my mouth work. Yes, there it goes, on the hinge of the jaw, but nothing is emerging! I had no voice. No voice! On the very day I was to open in a great big play in a great big theatre! Panic panic panic Panic PANIC!!

“It would not have surprised me if a wisp of smoke floated out from my larynx, like a cartoon dragon hit with a seltzer bottle.”

I had heard of people getting laryngitis, but was this really how it worked? Your voice simply abandoning you? There had been no sign of this oncoming horror yesterday.

Ah, but that wasn't quite true, was it? In the previous night's final dress, my voice would occasionally squeak like a pubescent. Not often -- just a handful of times. Now it seemed like a portent. And the radiators in these dorm rooms! With their dry heat! How often had I woken up feeling like someone had poured sand down my throat?

If one of my teeth concealed a cyanide capsule, like in the old spy movies, I would have chomped down at that moment without any hesitation. The fright alone nearly did me in, all by itself. I kept trying to speak -- I couldn't help it, because this couldn't be real -- and nothing kept happening. I gave up on fighting the panic and sat down on the floor and let it wash over me, the absolute magnificent horror. I could not begin to think of what I was supposed to do about this. If this was a fire, I might be performing some instinctual life-saving actions -- trying the window, trying the door, running like hell in any random direction. But I didn't seem to have any instincts suited to this situation, and so I sat on the floor, and stayed there for quite a while.

I eventually made a phone call. The stage manager for the show, Linda Burgess, had a powerful presence, and in her quiet, jovial, no-bullshit manner she had solved every production problem and wrinkle that had come up, from temperamental actors to improperly functioning sets. She drove the stagehands -- draftees from low-level theatre classes -- like a sled master during the Iditarod. All told, she had more energy and determination to get this show up and running than everyone else combined, including the director. Well, fine -- let her try her hand at this one.

And of course, Linda had a world of advice, as I knew she would. After calming me down, she gave me my marching orders: Drink tea. Do not drink soda or hot chocolate. Eat oranges -- the citric acid would be good for the throat. And do... not... panic.

What's amazing is, I cannot remember ever thinking that the show might be cancelled, or that I would not appear in it. I was going to go onstage and perform in the play -- I understood that intrinsically, even when I was sitting on the floor of my room, thunderstruck. It was nothing so gallant as reciting The show must go on! before leaping in for my first cue. It simply never occurred to me that the show could do anything but go on. I was a fairly important cog in this particular machine; the machine had to run; therefore, I would be there. Perhaps performing my role in mime, but I would be there.

“I'd like to say that day was a blur. It wasn't. I heard a dozen cures for laryngitis. None of them worked.”

I'd like to say that day was a blur, but it wasn't. I spent that day horrifying my friends and classmates, all of whom approached me with congratulatory smiles to wish me well or say "Break a leg." A single Thanks from the raspy ghost of my former voice, and their big smiles vanished in a flash, replaced with expressions of astonishment and terror, as if I had ripped my own face off right before their eyes.

I heard dozens of cures for laryngitis over that day. None of them worked.

Somehow I made it through the day. I arrived at the theatre early as always. I didn't see anybody, but word had clearly gotten around: Someone had placed a large bowl of orange and lemon slices in the dressing room. I ate as many as I could stand, one after another, until my stomach bubbled. I was well beyond shock at this point, and I actually felt fairly calm. Perhaps condemned men also feel this same calmness in the hours before they are led to the gallows -- the immediate horrible future is inevitable, so what's the point of screaming? Also, I couldn't scream.

Linda had told me not to speak, but I kept trying out my voice, seeing if it had magically returned. Nothing. The lemons and oranges actually did have a beneficial effect, making me slightly more audible -- raspy, but audible. But the effect was short-lived. I wandered around, accepting condolences from the crew and shocking the hell out of those few people who hadn't gotten the news. Time had slowed to a sluggish, oppressive crawl. I finally settled backstage, in costume, looking like death, mouthing my lines, waiting for the five-minute call.

Meanwhile, a joke was being played on the assistant stage manager.

Brian was a freshman and a nice kid. He filled in for me, reading my lines, when my once-a-week evening class overlapped briefly with rehearsal. From that responsibility, he was assigned the term "understudy." But he was definitely not an understudy in the traditional sense of the word: For one thing, Brian was six feet tall and had blonde hair -- not quite the Semitic stereotype I was portraying. Plus, Brian had numerous responsibilities backstage, and if he filled in for me, then someone else would have to fill in for him. If I had been hit by a train, the show would have been called off -- under no circumstances was Brian actually expected to step into my role.

“You're not in costume! Don't you need to run lines! My God! Curtain's in less than half an hour!"”

Brian, of course, knew this. And yet: The entire team of techies -- Linda's sled dogs -- descended on him in a fit of staged panic and started yelling in horror: "Brian! You're not in costume! Don't you need to run lines? My God! Curtain's in less than half an hour!"

Brian, who had just walked in, could not fathom what they were talking about, but definitely didn't like the sound of it. "What are you saying? I'm going onstage?"

"Haven't you seen Eric? You have to go see Eric!"

And so Brian, shaken to his core, found me backstage. I was sitting in a chair, looking grim. I was in costume, though, and had all my arms and legs. What was the trouble?

He took a step closer. "Hi, Eric," he said.

I glanced up at him. "Hi," I said, miserably. And Brian gave a startled shout, gaped at me, shouted again, and ran off. This was by far the most extreme reaction of the day, short of my own, ten hours earlier.

But Brian, to his immense relief, did not go on. At 7:55 that evening I climbed into the "luggage compartment" of the "train" which was the setting of the play's first scene. The train had been built in the orchestra pit, on a platform which would rise up in front of the audience. I wasn't supposed to be seen until halfway through the scene, however, and the only way to hide was to bend myself into the fetal position behind the various duffel bags that were stacked up around me. I lay there and listened to the pre-show music: "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." It would be years before I could hear that song without my heart racing.

The lights started to dim, and the other actors on the train said "Break a leg" to each other, and the platform began to rise up.

The first scene is about ten minutes long, and I was to remain hidden, crouched down in the luggage compartment, for the first half of it. This was easily the longest five minutes of my life. Soon I would pop up and say my first line -- and what would come out of my mouth? There was no way to know. I wanted desperately to test my voice again, see if a miracle had occurred, but I couldn't do that now, and besides, who was I kidding? I was out here on stage without a voice, and that was that. If a miracle had occurred, I would find out at the same time as everyone else in the theatre, when I said my first line.

Another actor whacked me with his cap, and that was my cue. I popped up and said, "I'm sorry. I'm not feeling very well."

“Soon I would pop and say my first line—and what would come out of my mouth? There was no way to know.”

Raspy, strained, but audible. And further, my first line fit my actual condition. I sounded as sick as my character was supposed to be. Soon I would learn something amazing: People thought I was acting. The following day, people would stop me to say they had seen the show and to compliment the production. I would say "Thank you," and one girl actually asked: "Why are you still talking like that?"

We got through it. We more than got through it: We did very well. And if I still couldn't act and had gotten my character all wrong from the first day, well, few people noticed or cared -- everyone was too busy having a good time, enjoying Neil Simon's expert one-liners and our delivery of them.

The following day, my laryngitis seemed even worse, and despite surviving the previous night, I was worried all over again. I needn't have been. That evening's show was the best of the whole run. The sold-out theatre was with us from the first lines. The audience again thought my voice was just me acting out my character's supposed illness. (The play takes place over the course of months, and my voice didn't improve any in that time, but no one seemed to question this. Perhaps they didn't think I was acting, and I had merely earned their sympathy.) And at one point, I said a line that stopped the show. I don't know why it stopped the show -- it got no more than a decent laugh every other time -- but tonight I apparently said it (rasped it) in some special way. The audience applauded while I tried not to look befuddled and pleased.

And when I stepped forward for my curtain call that evening, the applause ratcheted up dramatically. It stopped me cold. It was one of the finest, most astonishing moments of my life. The curtain rang down and one of my fellow actors said, "You were on tonight." And I was. It makes no sense, and most of the credit goes to Neil Simon, and another percentage has to go to the audience themselves simply for accepting me up there, but some credit, at the end of the day, goes to me -- even if whatever I did up there, I did wholly accidentally. I was on, for the first and last time in my life.

We had one final show that weekend, and then two days off. I spent those two days sicker than I had ever been in my entire life. I couldn't eat, I couldn't get out of bed except to run madly to the bathroom to vomit. My body had patiently been waiting for the first few shows to be over before leveling me with an illness made manifest from all of the nervousness and terror I had been through.

By the time Wednesday morning came around, I was shaky but improved, and my voice had totally returned. By that evening, I was my old self, and that night I went on stage as usual.