When my daughter Myrna came home from rehearsals for Judy and David's musical Pigmania (she plays a foxette) she told me that Mark Terene will be the director (as it turns out he directed last year's Judy and David March break show, Goldirocks).

Mark Terene is a well-known Toronto actor, having originated the role of Pumbaa in The Lion King and also playing Cogsworth in Beauty and The Beast, amongst many other roles. However, I first saw Mark perform in Pirates of Penzance when he was in high school at Earl Haig in the early '70s. He played "the very model of a modern major general" and I still remember that performance and how good and funny he was. I must have been only 10 or so at the time so it made a big impression. I became a staunch Gilbert and Sullivan fan thereafter.

It's interesting how theater experiences when you are young can stick with you for a lifetime. They become seared into your brain in a way that rarely happens when you're older. The other formative theater viewing experience I had was also a show at Earl Haig in the '70s. I remember seeing Jane Johanson, Tom Knowlton and one other guy, whose name I cannot remember, dance Steam Heat in The Pajama Game.

From that moment on I decided I had to play Gladys Hotchkiss at some point in my life. That goal was to be finally and fully realized at university in the Queen's Musical Theatre production of The Pajama Game in 1984.

It really is too bad they've cut so much of the theater arts programs out of the public schools...