Aimee

People often ask me what my end goal is for my acting career. End goal? Broadway? A big movie? Is that what they mean? After a ten year hiatus to have my three gorgeous children (I’m a little biased), my first end goal was to not throw up at auditions. I was sometimes successful. Now, the longer I am back in this world, my end goal has become to have no end goal. My goal is to continue learning and growing as an actor, to continue playing tennis with those who are better and more experienced. My goal is to do work that feels important and makes my family proud – that makes it a little easier for them to understand if I have to miss a sporting event or school performance. My goal is to play roles that scare me because those are the ones that will push me to the next level of performance.

The weekend the world shut down, I opened and closed the world premiere of a play called “Conversations About an Empty Suit,” written by Madelyn Sergel and directed by Judy Blue. It was that play, that role, that truly taught me that no one else can define what success is. It will look different for everyone. It will look different for me, a mom of three, starting my career later in life when many have settled into what they have done for years. It will look different for me than a young twenty-something fresh out of theater school. I love where my career is headed and where it has been. I love seeing the theatre world with fresh eyes and knowing that what I offer now to a role is rich with life experience and empathy. Keeping that in mind, my end goal is to always work authentically and to always stay true to who I am.

Some logistical things if I still have your attention. Some of my favorite roles over the last few years have been Abby in Conversations About an Empty Suit, as mentioned above, Fiona in Brigadoon (my first show back after so many years), the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods, Jane Tate in It Runs in the Family (goodness, does it feel good to just make people laugh for a couple hours in the midst of such a chaotic world), and Mrs. Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank (Oof. It was very different playing this role as a Jewish mom of young children than it was reading the book as a young girl). I have also been having fun filming my first commercials and painstakingly learning to control these eyebrows and big expressions on camera. As Dean Cobb always told us in high school productions, be loud enough that Bob Cobb [his dad] can hear you in the back row and big enough that he can see you. That really sticks with you, has done me wonders on stage, and turns out, does not translate to on-camera work. Like I said, always learning and growing.

Other interests include traveling with my family (or without because sometimes Mom needs a girls trip), embarrassing my children, hiking, laying on the couch with my standard poodles, Leo and Pearl, listening to True Crime, working out, reading, cows, collecting mugs, making to-do lists that I swear I am going to follow, and being with my friends. I am living a life I never could have dreamed and am endlessly grateful for everything I have: my health, my family who supports this wild ride of a career, new friends who have come to my life in more recent years and lifelong childhood friends who truly know me better than I know myself - who hold a mirror up for me to see that I am wonderful when I don’t feel it and to humble me when I need it…the list could go on and on.

What a ride. Looking forward to what is just around the corner.