After fourteen months of reading, research, planning and preparation, here we are beginning rehearsals for Cabaret and I am filled with the terrifying feeling that I have at the beginning of every project: I can’t possibly begin since I don’t know enough about anything. I have learned enough about myself as a director to know that this crucial stage, as I step into rehearsals for the first time, of “unknowing” is as important as researching and contemplating the play deeply.

Returning to PlayMakers to play the role of Lana Sherwood in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play has been both a pleasure and a challenge. It’s Monday, our day off from the run, and it’s startling how exhausted I am. With our busy schedule of eight shows this last week, resulting in two double-show days fraught with twice the amount of time wrangling elaborate victory rolls on my heavily gelled and ossified hair, the joy of acting has shown its flip side as quite a bit of hard work. It’s impossible to do each show well without sufficient rest in between.

I had mixed feeling about accepting this design assignment! While I grew up in a Miracle of 34th Street house, I married an It’s a Wonderful Life man. My husband Frank, is such a fan of the movie that it is a really big deal when we watch it.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a hit! The Daily Tar Heel today gave the show FIVE STARS, saying it “breathed new life into both the classic story and the art of radio acting” and made this charming holiday staple, “once again, truly wonderful.”