About two months ago, or so, I received an invitation to join a Facebook Group called UNA Theatre Department 1990’s from my old friend, Mike Reynolds. He explained that he had formed this group to catch up with his theatre department family who had all, over the last fifteen or twenty years, allowed ourselves to drift apart. I immediately accepted this invitation and started the catching up process with many people that I haven’t heard from in years. It was fun to see where life had taken everyone! Naturally before long, Mike was urging us all to reconnect in person, as was his way. Back in school, Mike was the glue that held all of our personalities together…no minor feat, mind you, considering that we were actors and therefore each of us had several of them.
Back in 1996, when I started at The University of North Alabama as a seventeen year old, greener than well tended grass, hopelessly idealistic, and shamefully naive to the real world college freshman—I naturally had it all figured out. Before long, it was time for my first major audition with the theatre department but there was one major problem—it was a musical. At the time, I had yet to have the opportunity to audition through song and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to match pitch, or read music, or breath in such a way as to support myself vocally…apparently I didn’t even know how to correctly pick an audition song because my “brilliant” song choice was…wait for it…”Memory” from the musical Cats. Hand…to…God. I will spare you the details of the audition, (and myself from any further embarrassment), and just say that it was a total disaster. I calmly walked off stage, through Norton Auditorium, out the doors, and promptly disintegrated into a mess of tears in the back stairwell. I had been there alone in my misery for maybe a minute when the door opened and Mike Reynolds walked through it. He sat down next to me and put his arm around me, sternly asked why in the world I was crying, and then proceeded to point out all the things that I had just done right. He wouldn’t hear my weeping explanations of the horror show that audition was and why my entire theatrical life was now obviously over. He was encouraging. He was supportive. He was loving. He was Mike. And, he was that way with everyone he knew…as well as with some he didn’t even know!
So, when I saw that Mike had formed this group as a way to force us all to make the effort to reconnect with each other, it didn’t surprise me. Like I said, he had always been the glue for us. As I sit here today, I can’t help but wish we had made more of an effort, since the start of that group, to get together. Unfortunately, Mike saw to that as well. All of those familiar faces gathered together last Friday to bury our dear friend, Michael Reynolds, following the fatal car accident that took him from us. We cried, we laughed, we remembered our times together, we caught each other up on our times apart, and we missed the man who is no longer with us…because truth be told, he was the very best of us. He taught us what dedication meant—to work, to school, to our craft, and to one another—and he taught us that so many years apart from the people, the friends, who helped make each of us who we are today is unacceptable. I never told Mike what that small moment on the stairs meant to me. I never told him that what he said to me was the foundation of what became a love of singing and dancing on stage, not to mention the fact that it provided me with the courage to try again. Not one single audition has passed where I didn’t remember his words to me and draw strength from his belief in me, (which never waivered…even after that God awful nightmare of an audition so many years ago!). And now, he has taught me the hard lesson of never allowing that oversight to happen in the future. I have to, and will, make the effort to tell others what they mean to me and how they have helped me grow into the woman that I am today…slightly less green than that college freshman that I once was, but every bit as hopeful and idealistic.
Rest in peace, my sweet friend. Thank you for the lessons…
