Oltl Day 3--Shared Experience

As I look around at the Oltl/AMC cast and crew, I see people I've worked with and people whose names I've heard for years. And people who have worked in other parts of TV and film. And people who live nearby and are getting the "big break" that I got almost 25 years ago. And I am struck by the combined total years of experience surrounding me. While people in other parts of my life are amazed to hear me say, "I was at One Life to Live on and off for 23 years," here at Stamford Soap Camp, my story is not that unusual. Many of us "cut our teeth" on soaps, then stayed for numbers of years that no one today even thinks about working in one place. We may have worked on different shows, and with different production and post-production models, but we all were part of creating daily scripted television for more years than most television shows even aspire to last. And many, many of us experienced the fall of soap production in New York, making our shared experience a combination of exhilaration and grief.
 
What all this shared experience means is that both the production and the product stand to be the best of all the worlds from which we come. For while we may have been doing some of the same things, we have been doing them in different ways. As I brought new knowledge back to soap life after I'd worked for four years in the sitcom world, each of us here will be contributing his or her particular body of knowledge, and that's an exciting prospect. So, when we begin to air on April 29th, look for a show that will reflect a huge amount of shared experience--and some of the best talent that the soap world has to offer.