This is a kind of transition time for Cindy Womack. The theatre people on the Monterey Peninsula have watched her grow up in their theatres. Now it's her first big directing job, a main stage summer production for Unicorn. This is her year to grow up, personally and professionally, She's turning 24.

Cindy is a Monterey Peninsula native. She attended Del Monte and La Mesa Elementary Schools, Martin Luther King Junior High School, and Monterey High School. At La Mesa she auditioned with seven boys and got the part of the villain, Ebenezer Snipe, in a melodrama performed before students, staff, and parents. In Junior High School she did two shows. In one, she played a detective and totally blanked on her lines. She couldn't remember how she solved the crime, just who did it. She cut the play short by about twenty minutes, saying something like " Look at her - you can tell she's guilty. Take her away." At Monterey High she took drama classes. Her classmates included John Farmanesh, who was head of the Thespian Society - " Sometimes Mr. Dilbeck, the teacher, would let John teach the class." and Sky Rappaport, who did tech. Cindy's primary function was as stage manager.

During her high school years Cindy started going to Grovemont's Theatrefest, at Monterey's Custom House Plaza, every weekend - with her brother and her best friend. They became volunteer members of the Human Chess Game, filling in for the missing chess pieces. She still loves doing the Chess Game, describing it as a good opportunity for improvisational exercise and a good opportunity for women to do stage combat. During the same period she began volunteering for Grovemont at the Hoffman Playhouse - concessions, clean-up, "making a pest of myself. Julie Hughett became my mentor. She taught me a lot about house managing, stage managing, and being in charge of actors twice my age."

During her last year in high school, Cindy started working part time for Center Stage Ticketing, with her friend from high school Sky Rappaport. After graduation, she took some classes at Monterey Peninsula College, but no drama classes. She continued doing stage work for Grovemont, as stage manager for OTHELLO, on stage as a spear-carrier in MACBETH. It was at this point she realized that she could " play guy parts and get away with it." When she got the part of Boy in Grovemont's HENRY V, she felt she finally got to show she could act. Her part included two monologues to the audience.

Cindy dropped out of MPC when they raised the fees. She decided she would rather "work in the trenches" than go to school and learn theory. She began working part-time at the Monterey County Theatre Alliance Box Office, again with Sky, and continued doing assorted tech work and stage-managing - for Grovemont and Staff Players Repertory Company. Then she started acting in Unicorn Theatre productions, the first being BULLSHOT CRUMMOND at the dinner show at Big Sur River Inn. In another River Inn show she took over Bob Colter's role in Moliere's A DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF, with two days notice, no rehearsals, just watching two performances. At one point in the show she totally blanked on lines and blocking. As she tells it "Colleen Finnegan played my wife. Whenever I thought I was supposed to move, I would pick her up and carry her around. All that body-carrying for Grovemont paid off."

When Unicorn took over the Hoffman Playhouse, Cindy was cast in it's premiere production - HUNTING COCKROACHES. She sees her big break-through (biggest female role to date) as Felicia Dantine, a real estate agent, in I HATE HAMLET, again for Unicorn. She has continued acting for Unicorn and then doing Theatrefest (she is now one of the actors in what she calls "Fairy Tales, the Next Generation") and the Carmel Shake-speare Festival for Pacific Repertory Theatre (formerly Grovemont) during the summer. As Cindy describes it, "With I HATE HAMLET I became a part of Unicorn. If you're here a lot, you quickly get incorporated into every aspect of production - help paint sets, build costumes, find props, run box office." And now Unicorn is giving her a chance to direct her first main stage production, Neil Simon's LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR.

Cindy likes to talk about her philosophy of theatre," I got into theatre because I liked watching TV. There's always one episode set in a theatre. That's a great image of theatre that TV shows you." She explains her comment about working in the trenches, "Community theatre is trench warfare. The piece of ground you're fighting for is the audience. An actor without an audience is schizophrenic....... I try to be a very blue collar theatre person. When it comes to the part where I have to consider the audience, I think about my parents. They're not theatre people; they've never heard of the plays they come to see me in....... That's what I like about Theatrefest. What makes a good Chess Game and a good outdoor theatre festival in general are the elements of familiarity - in the fairy tales, on the chess board, or wherever. It brings the people in. A good Chess Game should have aspects of a good block party."