STEEL TOWN ON BROADWAY

( In the process of trying to downsize, it seems as though I am reliving my past all over again. Moments in time, events that I had honestly forgotten about. Will this mean anything to anyone but me?)

20140618-171329-62009015.jpg

November 17,1994

It was a chilly day. The fall wind was whipping down the famous street as we all gathered in the square of Times Square, in the center on Broadway in New York City. We were all ages, all had our stories to tell, but all 206 of us had something in common. We were actors. We appeared on Broadway. We were from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, all of us.

Christopher Rawson the drama critic at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette at the time, either hatched this brainchild on his own, or was given the assignment by the editor of the Gazette. In any event it was quite a task getting all 206 of us actors at the same place at the same time. And for each of us, it would be a once in a lifetime event. I even wore a red beret trying to stand out in a crowd of 206 actors. That was a laugh because the paper printed it in black and white.

I was 107 in the photo standing next to Lynda Jamison, who started her cabaret career in her forties with the encouragement from the likes of Margaret Whiting and Julie Wilson.

I left the Pittsburgh area in 1972, so it was a long time since I had gone through the tunnel and into the City of Three Rivers and the Golden Triangle. Most of my fellow actors that day had rooted in Manhattan where they could ply their craft but their hearts were still back in their hometown-Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

So a smidgen of The Steel City was standing for a still shot in the heart of Broadway, far away from where they began their journey in a business that is always not so kind to transplants with a dream. Our Pittsburgh town made it happen

(The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reran this story in 2004 )

Copyright 2014 Sandra Hart. All rights reserved.

20140618-173315-63195182.jpg