Many years ago, I received a sun-visor for auditioning for Aaron Spelling’s “Sunset Beach.”  Sort of a “we’re not hiring you, but have this ugly hat anyway” gesture.  Yeah, I know, they probably didn’t hire any “nobodies” from their nation-wide audition tour; I’m sure they never planned to.  It was a publicity stunt.  But I didn’t know that then.  You guys think I’m an optimist now?  You should have seen me in my late teens and early twenties.  I really thought I had a chance.  After all, I had performance experience and a great attitude.  So many of the other applicants were simply pretty girls that wanted to be on tv.  The audition was comprised of standing on stage with ten other girls and having someone yell, “Turn around!” so that they could look at our asses.  If my ass had somehow made the cut, I can’t imagine I’d be truly happy doing a show like that.  If that had happened, I would have moved to LA, not Seattle…which means I never would have toured Europe…so I never would have performed an improvised play in a small town in Switzerland inside a beautiful, old stone tower.  It is one of my favorite memories—not just from that trip and it’s not just one of my favorite performance memories–it’s one of my favorite life memories.  Not only were my colleagues and I improvising a story with genuine characters and sincere moments, but nobody was judging the size or shape of my ass.  (Well, that I know of, anyway).  As artists, aren’t we here to tell the stories that desire to be told?  In that stone tower in Switzerland that evening, it truly felt like it was a story that wanted to be told.  I’m not sure I can say the same for “Sunset Beach.”