Free Michael Douglas: Acting on Instinct by Michael Douglas, John Parker Page B

merely for his stageperformances, either. He was a leader of one of the guerrilla troupes that mushroomed in the late 1960s, darting around the
     campus, perhaps invading a class-in-progress and faking some kind of accident or shooting, then, with the full attention of
     the students and tutors, making a speech about the terrors of Vietnam.
    In the summer of 1967, back at the Playwrights’ Conference in Waterford, Douglas took his first major roles outside the UCSB.
     He joined the resident troupe which performed most of the new plays brought in by writers eager to have their work produced,
     taking the lead in the anti-war play
Summertree
by a new young writer named Ron Cowen. The play was an examination through flashbacks of the life of a young man forced into
     uniform and who becomes a Vietnam casualty.
    Like much of the work showcased at Waterford, it was a new play that was also considered an excellent social observation of
     the times. It was a feather in Douglas’s cap to be cast in the lead, but the benefits were greater than that – being thrown
     into a variety of new work after short preparation during these August excursions to Waterford provided invaluable experience
     for actor and writer alike.
    Douglas roomed with Ron Cowen at Waterford and their association on that play led to other collaborations, including an off-Broadway
     production of the play, which did not include Douglas in the cast, and a later film which did. Another association was formed
     that summer at Waterford when Michael was cast opposite Brenda Vaccaro, a young actress destined for a long stay in Douglas’s
     life, though all of these developments from the summer engagement lay in the future.
    Michael returned to Santa Barbara that autumn seriously contemplating a future in acting, even though terrible bouts of stage
     fright made him throw up almost as soon as he came off stage. Until then, acting might still have been just a student fling
     to be discarded in favour of a career in one of the professions.
    He added to his student accolades – and his enthusiasm for a career in the performing arts – during the following semester
     by being voted best director at UCSB for his presentation of John Guare’s biting one-act social satire,
Muzeeka
.
    That year, also, he received his BA degree from the University of California, his family present to witness a graduation that
     at one time seemed a most unlikely possibility. He moved immediately to New York to continue his dramatic training, taking
     an apartment which he shared with Danny DeVito on West 89th Street. He secured a place at the Neighborhood Playhouse, appearing
     in workshop productions of Pirandello’s
Six Characters in Search of an Author
and Thornton Wilder’s
Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden
.
    In November he moved on to join Wynn Handman at the American Place Theater, where he faced new challenges in a more demanding
     setting. But in terms of being a qualified, professional actor, Douglas had much to learn, and he knew it. He admitted that
     the speed at which he found decent roles outside the normal route of off-Broadway and neighbourhood theatre was surprising,
     and seemed to have more to do with who he was than with his ability.
    His first big break came early in 1969, after one of thosecasting calls for which New York is renowned. He was cast for a role in a CBS Television Playhouse production of Ellen M.
     Violett’s moralistic drama
The Experiment
, to be televised nationwide on 25 February. It was a pivotal role of a scientist who compromises his liberal views to accept
     a lucrative job with a major corporation, a role meaty enough for him to show off his talents to a wider public and to face
     some serious reviewers for the first time – and with a decent reaction.
    Prestigious television critic Jack Gould wrote in the following day’s
New York Times
: ‘Michael Douglas turned in a remarkably lucid and attractively relaxed performance.’ Gould could