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Nonactuarial Pursuits of Casualty Actuaries
Actress, Singer, Dancer, Playwright by Marty Adler
It has been debated as to who leaves the more lasting impres-sion, the creative artist or the performing artist. I suspect that question does not concern our featured Fellow. She performs in dramas and musicals, and is currently writing a screenplay and a stage play—that is when she is not busy running her consulting business, actively engaging in professional activities, and playing her real life role of wife and mother of four children between ages 10 and 16, and stepmother of two grown children.
She has always loved theater, having been introduced by her parents to professional theater at a young age. In high school and community theater, she worked backstage (she felt too shy to go onstage). Once, as property mistress for Gypsy, she arranged to borrow a baby lamb from Six Flags Amusement Park. Since the park would be closed after the performance, she planned to drop off the lamb at a nearby farm. Her boyfriend drove her to the farm in her father's Barracuda, the lamb squeezed into the tiny, back-seat passenger area. It was night, it was dark. A highway patrolman happened to notice a broken taillight on the 'Cuda, pulled them over, got out of the patrol car, and walked over, shining his flashlight. He asked to see the driver's license. The boyfriend handed it over. As the patrolman examined the license, the passenger in the back seat let out with a loud "BAA!" The patrolman glanced at the driver. "Fix the light," said the patrolman, who then just handed back the license and walked away.
After graduate school she decided to conquer her stage fright. She took acting lessons and began dancing again. (She had sung in church choirs since she was young.) Next she started auditioning and, to her amazement, she got good parts.
A new job, marriage, and children led to a 15-year hiatus from theater, although she generally kept up her dance lessons and choir activities. After getting the children involved in community theater, they all tried out for The Sound of Music in 1997. Only she made it. But the children insisted that she take the nun role she was offered.
Tragically, her first husband suddenly passed away shortly afterward. In the spring of 1998 she decided that she needed to do something for herself. She took professional acting lessons, which led to her first paid acting jobs.
Now she acts in community theater (mostly musicals) and has been a paid extra in feature and television movies. She was an extra in Big Brass Ring with William Hurt, a movie sold directly to cable. One scene was filmed behind the arch in St. Louis in 100° July heat. They were dressed for an event in October, shortly before an election, and they weren't supposed to sweat, as that would make their makeup run. The crowd for the political event had to make a lot of noise. Although what they said could not be distinguished in the hubbub, what they actually said were words like, "It's too hot," "What are we doing out here now?" and "Whose dumb idea was this?"
Participating in community theater with her children can lead to awkward moments, too. In The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall about an English girls' boarding school, she played an overly dramatic German gym teacher trying to teach dance. She wore heavy makeup, a leotard, a wild dance skirt, and a turban. While one girl said, "My mother wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit," her own daughter just said, "Oh, Mom!"
There are compensations, of course. While her children do not often compliment her directly, she takes satisfaction from the fact that they always volunteer her help backstage.
Our Fellow also does paid acting in a variety of local venues, the most steady as a standardized patient at a local medical school. Several years ago she was nominated for a local award as best actress in a non-singing role as the housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, in The Secret Garden. Coincidentally, she sang all the chorus parts offstage for that show. As this issue went to press she was scheduled to appear in Amahl and the Night Visitors with the Midwest Lyric Opera Company.
Not content with mere acting, singing and dancing, our Fellow has written a screenplay about intergenera-tional conflict with a happy ending. She describes it as "a Hallmark-type story." A friend who is a professional director is reviewing it. She is also working on a drama for two or three characters, based on a real incident with one of Daniel Boone's daughters-in-law.
Margaret Tiller Sherwood says the theater helps her actuarial career. After appearing on stage in a merry widow with fishnet stockings, chewing gum, singing, and dancing in Pal Joey with her boss in the audience, there is no professional actuarial presentation that can scare her.
To fill the rest of her time, Sherwood is the current president-elect of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries and president for the Central States Actuarial Forum, a CAS Regional Affiliate.