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posted 2007-2010

Mary tends to see modern life through a theatrical lens. Teaching theatre arts to high school students and directing them in what she calls “good, worthwhile plays,” was a real learning experience, on both sides of the desk. Mary relished making up the curriculum her newly formed department of one. This was back in the days when most private high schools didn’t have much theatre and what they did have competed with the sports department for resources, money, and cache. The rehearsal space was often filled, not with props, but with sweaty boys trying to put a round ball through a hoop.

She worked for professional theatres – Center Stage in Baltimore, the Academy Festival Theatre in Lake Forest, IL, and the Arlington Park Theatre in Arlington Heights, IL, where as business manager, she was the one who turned out the lights when the theater folded, and Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where she headed up the box office and subscription sales.

She has acted (“once, only once!”) in The Cemetery Club and got to die in the second act. “Other than that, I wasn’t bad at all.”

She wrote reviews for the Pioneer Press in Barrington, IL, getting a good look at a nice mixture of community theatre and professional theatre in the Chicago area. “It was a real eye opener - at quality grass-roots theatre being produced in America. I have an abiding respect for what those so-called amateurs can do. Some of the best and most genuine theatre I saw came from community efforts. I believe this is what Hallie Flanagan meant when she started the regional theatre movement in this country. The only things I’d change about community theatre would be to give them more money and make it possible to develop local playwrights.”

Now Mary is writing original online fiction and has an enhanced e-book, Moon Mayhem, listed on the Amazon Kindle Store.