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Catwoman or Nun?
A short autobiography by Catherine
Allgor
Awareness is all. When I was a little girl, I wanted to
be either catwoman or a nun when I grew up. This
juxtaposition of good and evil bothered my
Jesuitically-influenced mind, but a deeper look into the two
choices revealed the common element--costumes. That's when I
decided to be an actress.
College was never really an option for my
family--especially for girls--but I found my way to Bucks
County Community College, where I dutifully embarked on an
English major to prepare for the only other profession I
knew--a teacher--but soon was seduced away by acting
classes. It was the 70s and I passed my junior college
career in a welter of bare feet, improv, natural food, and
unnatural acts. I then transferred to North Carolina School
of the Arts (the Julliard of the South) and found my way to
New York.
My acting career lasted eleven years. Although I slummed
around in soap opera and came close to a leading movie role
or two, theatre was my bread and butter and my love. I
specialized in heroic roles, especially historical ones. In
1986, I got a very special opportunity. Stage One
Productions wanted me to do William Luce's one-woman show
about Emily Dickinson, THE BELLE OF AMHERST. In an almost
unheard-of move, they gave me a grant to go to Amherst,
Mass. and study Dickinson. And I did. With no formal
training and only an actor's instincts, I skipped all the
books about Dickinson and focused on what I now know as
"primary sources--her actual words and the poems. I spent
four months in Amherst, created two full journals of notes,
so that when rehearsals started, and I stood up and said the
words, I had my own relationship with them.
Emily was a great success and by 1989, I was in an
enviable position--on the all-woman board of directors at
Princeton Rep Company, making a living and choosing my own
roles. It was then I realized that I chose some plays not
for the roles but for the chance to teach the history to the
company. I had one of those "catwoman/nun" moments. I should
be doing something else. I started to investigate going back
to school--how could such a thing be possible for an
impoverished over-thirty actor?
When I was researching Emily, I had also toodled around
the Pioneer Valley, admiring from afar the centers of higher
learning, especially Mount Holyoke College, which I had
"attended" as part of a road company of Wendy Wasserstein's
UNCOMMON WOMEN AND OTHERS. In my new role as prospective
student I discovered that, like a lot of women's colleges,
they had specially-funded programs for women of
"nontraditional age." I became a Frances Perkins Scholar, a
history major, and then a graduate student at Yale.
Being a historian, I am conscious of dates and
anniversaries. Holding my first book in my hands this fall
would be meaningful moment enough. But it was exactly ten
years ago this fall that I sold my stuff, packed up my car
and arrived at Mount Holyoke. I had no idea of what "I was
going to do when I grew up," had never turned on a computer
or written a paper. And now a book. I'm glad that the nun
thing never worked out.
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