Will Turbett, author of this blog post, in his favorite seat in the Green Room at the Guild.
And now for something completely different, a blog post by someone else.
Hello folks, William Turbett here. I was recently asked by Tom Sparrow to write a blog post for the Guild website, and while the accusations on whether he asked me at either gun point or with a knife to my throat are still being debated, I am here to write a post regarding my experiences with the Guild.
I first learned of the Guild in 2005. I was a sophomore at Edsel Ford High School. I already had done one theatre show there, the show in question being Dracula. I was Renfield and apparently I did an okay job with it. But during my sophomore year at that place, the head of the drama club decided that it was time to pull out a show that gave everyone ample chances at being on stage. That show naturally being Anne of Green Gables. A show which has numerous roles for women. A show with few roles for men. Let me just say that this was the first of many ideas which I would now reflect on and go “Uuuuuugh”. And because I wasn’t a kisser of butt that the head of the drama club wanted everyone to be, I was at a lost as what to do.
Then my mom told me of the Players Guild of Dearborn, a community theatre group that is, truly, just a five minute drive from my house. I decided that it would be better for me to audition for a show that had actual effort put in it. The show that I auditioned for was Man of LaMancha, the story of the knight Don Quixote De LaMancha. I was a member of the chorus, seeing as how I was 15 at the time, there was no way that I would be able to play a big role in that show, and that was fine. Want to know why? Because the people who helped make it, the director, the music director, the actors, the set designers, everyone excelled at what they did.
And thus began my time at the Guild. I did a few more shows there, but come 2007 I stopped. I went to Wayne State University to study theatre, I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre in 2011 and I now work as an audio book narrator, with two books out and two more on the way. What? You say that this is some elaborate way for me to advertise my work? Of course not! What you think I get paid every time I mention the Audio Book Creation Exchange ACX.com-
*Ka-ching!
Which put all audio books that were produced on Audible.com-
*Ka-ching
Which is a company owned by Amazon.com-
*Ka-ching
… moving on.
Thanks to The Players Guild of Dearborn, I and others like me are given an outlet to go on stage and show our stuff. We have this opportunity to let our creativity show with an audience who is willing to watch what we have. It’s thanks to the Guild that I am who I am.
Thanks for reading, I hope your eyesight hasn’t degraded too badly. This has been William Turbett.
Stay golden.