While I can hardly claim to have had any success as an actor... there is one tiny element of this that does remind me of my life experiences. There is a theater in our community that produces five or six plays per year. Shortly after moving here I decided I would try auditioning for a role in an upcoming play. My audition was not very good. Even so, I was offered a small role in an upcoming production. A few months down the road, I tried auditioning again. This time I was not offered a role, but the theater director suggested I might want to try working as a stage manager or a board operator. I decided to give this a try. I turned out to be reasonably good at this. Over several years I served as a rehearsal SM, a production SM, and in many cases, both. I turned out to be reasonably good at this and SMed one or two shows per season for at least a dozen years. Calling a show is every bit as important as being an actor, but it doesn't offer the opportunity to be seen, which was the thing I craved. Even so, I am very grateful for the opportunities I had to participate in some way.

One more thing, perhaps the most interesting aspect of being an SM is figuring out what to do when something goes wrong... I saw many of these mishaps, and managed to figure out a solution in every case.