Christine Baranski

Well, the rest is history, because by the time I was a junior or senior in high school, I read about the Juilliard School having opened up a drama division

And I read that in the Buffalo Evening News, cut out the article, taped it onto my wall and said, that's where I want to go.

What was the Buffalo Studio Arena?

And they actually had, that was a marvellous regional theatre back then.

They premiered plays everywhere.

by Edward Albee.

And they did Beckett plays.

I remember seeing several productions there.

But what really, the thing that I think was a turning point for me was in Buffalo, you could take a train up to the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

And as a sophomore or a freshman or sophomore in high school, I remember taking the train up

And sitting in the audience, I was up high, like in a balcony, watching Romeo and Juliet, these marvelous Canadian actors, one of whom was William Hutt, was really quite a well-known Canadian actor.

Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure.

And I remember it was like, you know, when Cupid strikes you with an arrow and you fall in love.

Something happened to me up in Stratford.

And the other thing that was transformative for me is there was an advertisement in the Buffalo Evening News of a theater workshop that they were doing at the State University of Buffalo.

And it would be improvisational theater and theater arts.

And they had auditions for it, and I got in.

And suddenly, I went from being a girl who just, her whole life was the Polish-American community, and everyone had an S-K-I at the end of her name, or so many vowels that you couldn't find, so many consonants you couldn't find a vowel in the name.

That was my world, and suddenly,

I was in this workshop and I would take a bus to the University of Buffalo where we did this theater workshop.