My love of live theater probably started when, at age 10, obsessed with watching the Mickey Mouse Club television series “Spin and Marty,” I wrote the story as a play. After a serious sales pitch, I convinced my teacher to let me produce the play as a school-assembly program.

As producer/director, I chose the players, casting myself, of course, as the female lead, played on TV by Annette Funicello. As memory serves, the production was a smashing success. But then again, I was 10, and most of you are saying: “What was the Mickey Mouse Club?” “Who the heck was Annette Funicello?”

It is safe to say that my dramatic career might have peaked in the fourth grade. But I was hooked. I acted in plays all through high school and flirted with the idea of majoring in theater at the University of Wisconsin. Reason prevailed, however, and I settled on the safety of an elementary-education degree.

I avidly followed the Broadway theater in my stay-at-home-mom years in Connecticut. Longing to be more than a spectator, I joined the Fairfield County Children’s Theater, which produced a different classic fairy tale each year, trouping the full-set production, four days a week, to every public elementary school in the county. Since I was the tallest member of the all-woman troupe, I most often played a male role, running the gamut from prince to pauper. I did have one particularly enjoyable season as a witch, which my friends inexplicitly inferred was type-casting.

With my two children finally in middle school, I joined the work force, learning the advertising business from the ground up. My company specialized in print collateral, which, for you laymen, is newspaper and magazine ads, brochures and package design. I answered the phone, did the bookkeeping, set type on a computer the size of a refrigerator, wrote and edited copy and ultimately became an account executive servicing such corporations as Georgia Pacific, Exxon Chemical Company and Pitney Bowes.

From advertising, I switched gears and joined Cook’s Illustrated magazine as copy editor. Food is another of my passions, and working in the production department of a major national magazine let me feed my interests on a daily basis. Can you believe I edited Martha Stewart’s submissions to our magazine, back when she was simply a caterer in Westport, Conn.?

In the early ’90s, my husband was transferred to London. My two-year whirlwind of travel and cultural immersion provided me plenty of raw material. Upon returning to the United States, I began writing travel features for major metropolitan newspapers. This led to an assignment to write “The Insiders’ Guide to the Florida Keys and Key West,” which I updated for 10 years. Other travel books I’ve written include “It Happened in the Florida Keys” and “Walking Places in New England.”

In 2005, my career took a turn into the kitchen. I wrote “The Florida Keys Cookbook,” then a series of cookbooks for busy home cooks: “Quick, Cheap Comfort Food,” “Leftover Makeovers,” “Make Ahead Meals” and “Slow Cooked Classics from Around the Globe.”

Deadlines met, it is time for me to give back to my community. Two years ago, serving as volunteer stage manager for a Turnage variety show fundraiser, my infatuation for the theater was rekindled. No local organization is more worthy of serious volunteer efforts than the Turnage Theater. I hope my skills and experience in the areas of advertising, public relations, promotion and writing will be of use to the Turnage board, so that in some small way I can contribute to the theater’s ongoing growth and prosperity.

Vicki Shearer is a new member of the Turnage Theaters Foundation’s Board of Directors.