Let me talk a little bit about beginnings...  When I was 22, I moved to Denver, fresh out of college, fresh out of a remarkable summer theater experience and freshly engaged.  My then fiancé had spun glorious stories of the theatrical productions taking place in Denver and how I was certain to find a home at the top of the Colorado theater world.  I found out quickly that you should never trust the theatrical knowledge of a guy who works as a rental car agent...

Denver has the world-class Denver Center Theater Company but, like most major regional theaters, they hire their actors out of LA or New York.  Even the sucky roles go to out of towners.  They fill out their company with students in their graduate program, in which my best friend from college was enrolled.  God, how I hated his smug headshot hanging in the grand lobby of the Bonfils theater!  "Fuck you!" I wanted to scream.  "I remember you from when you and I were bulimic!"  Rapidly, I sunk into a horrible job working promotions for a dating service, which shall remain nameless, and started upon my lifelong obsession of being jealous of other people.

Desperation and depression were my two bitchy friends when I lived in Denver.  Because of their twin influences, my first professional acting gig was at a haunted house in the suburbs.  No one is ever going to win a Tony for being "The Fiend of the Art Gallery," let me tell you.  My proudest moment was scaring some girl so badly that she dropped to the floor and had to be carried away.  Yay.  During my tenure at the Haunted House, I developed near-pneumonia and couldn't eat solid food for two weeks.  The low point came when I was driving home from work after throwing up on myself and got pulled over by a cop.  "Have you been drinking, Miss?"  "NO!  And I haven't been eating and breathing is kinda hard right now and someone hit my car in a parking lot today and drove off after just saying 'sorry' and I'm working at a HAUNTED HOUSE and if I quit, I won't get paid at ALL and I drive an '84 Cavalier and my fiancé is mean to me and I WANT MY MOM!"  The cop tore up the ticket and begged me to stop crying.  Seriously, he begged me.

Somewhere, somehow, I found Germinal Stage in all of this.  Germinal is technically a community theater, which conjures up images of a buck-toothed Mickey Rooney hollering "Let's sweep out the barn and put on a SHOW!"  It wasn't like that at all, though.  Germinal is run by Ed Baierlein, whose grim demeanor and astonishingly intimidating eyebrows were almost enough to make me turn tail and run at my first audition.  But I didn't.  I stayed.  And I am glad I did.

I was cast in a production called "Flemish Carnival," a collection of plays by Michel de Ghelderode.  In one, I was Mary Magdalene, and in another, a grave robbing toady of a Flemish vampire.  Loads of laughs, I tell you.  Halfway through the rehearsal process, Ed, who was directing, told us that we would be doing the Mary Magdalene piece as if we were marionettes.  Wha'?  Then, he passed out photocopied pictures of these weird-ass mummies in Mexico.  He told us that our characters for the vampire piece would all be based on one of these mummies.  Wha'aaa'?  I freaked out a little then, admittedly.  I wasn't used to someone saying "Fuck it!  Let's try THIS crazy thing!" because I had attended a theater program in which daring was not necessarily our raison d'etre (It was a Methodist school.  In chapel at said school, the pastor asked parishoners to come up and sing all the hymns that would be sung during the service before the service started so that we would be sure to "get it right.").  Ed gleefully led us into the dark world of his own Flemish nightmares, and we followed. 

I learned a lot at Germinal.  Sitting backstage with some other cast members from "Flemish Carnival," I spoke about my upcoming marriage.  One woman, nearer my mom's age than mine, said "How old are you, dear?"  "Twenty two.  I'll be twenty three by the time I'm married, though!"  Every single woman's mouth dropped open for a moment and then, with one voice, they all said "Don't do it!"  My only comeback to that was "But, we're in LOVE!"  Lamest.  Excuse.  Ever.  Lesson #2 of Denver theater; Listen to the women you meet backstage.  They know more than you.

I did three plays at Germinal in the two and a half years I lived in Denver.  One day, during the spectacularly funny, fucked up play "Make a French Scene," by Germinal alum Jake Jay Clark, I walked in to the theater to see that demented happy faces had been painted in a grid pattern on the stage.  I breathed in deeply.  "Yes," I thought, "this is what home is supposed to feel like."  I learned another important lesson later that year when I auditioned and was not even called back for their production of "Loot."  Sometimes you don't get the role.  And you have to go back and audition for another show because casting isn't personal.  If you love a theater company, if you love what they do and who they are, you have to keep coming back.

My last play at Germinal was "Oleanna," with myself and Ed comprising the entirety of the cast.  I knew I was about to be leaving Denver with my (should have listened!) then-husband for the greener pastures of the east coast.  I knew this would be my last chance for quality time at Germinal and my last opening night party at My Brother's Bar, where we always went to celebrate.  During the run, Ed's mother passed away and he acquired the ownership of the Germinal Theater outright.  Then, it was done and I left, and I haven't been back.

I thought of this all lately because I'm in the process of incorporating my production company.  I am working with fucked up geniuses whose visions are like mine.  More than anything else in the world right now, I want a little storefront theater, one where I can paint demented smiley faces on the floor if I damn well want to.  I want a place to produce shit that uses Mexican mummies as inspiration.  I want to be a thorn in the side of pompous theatrical pretension.  We've been meeting to discuss upcoming projects after wrapping our first show (more on that later), but for some reason, have steered clear of our company's mission statement.  We can all feel it, but how best to express it?  So many theater companies have mission statements including phrases like "a home for the actor" or "challenging the norms" or "giving voice to the people."  Let's be frank.  That's all bullshit.  Every theater company ever was started by someone who thought "I wanna do this ALL BY MYSELF!"  So we start companies.  Sometimes they fail.  And sometimes, just sometimes, we get it just right.  To quote Ed;

"Germinal Stage Denver is the runt stepchild of small non-profit theatres --a 30-year-old, 100-seat corner grocery of Thespis holding its own against the supermarkets. We're an actors' theatre, semi-rough, minimalist when we can afford it, doggedly hopelessly vaguely postmodern, but backpedaling forward to ritual, advancing rearward to modern, or sidestepping to shamelessly theatrical in more lucid moments. We have declared the battle against political correctness won and, licking our wounds, contemplate a pro-cannibalism theme season. Immediate goal: search for wealthy but empathetic private patron. Immediate outlook: dismal to bleak."

When I grow up, I wanna be just like Ed Baierlein.

--Amy Roeder is an improvisor, actor and producer based out of Chicago. She loves to hear other people's stories.

Amy got the chance to interview Ed Baierlein recently....