"Maybe it’s genetic? Maybe it’s environment? Who knows, I just feel things bigger than everyone else. I cry at dog food commercials for pity sake. I have, as the kids would say, “all the feels”." PJ Vogt writes about her lifelong battle against depression.
"I was in elementary school the first time they gave me happy pills. I remember that my mom gave them to me with applesauce before school each morning. I wasn’t a troubled kid, I just had too many emotions for the normal 4th grader."
In high school PJ realized she liked to make people laugh.
Today she uses self deprecating humor to get snickers, though she does boldly say "I'm the only one who can call me fat!"
When PJ returned home to Northwest Pennsylvania, after her husband got out of the military, she jumped into community theatre. First as a costume designer and then finally, after pushing away her insecurities, she joined everyone on stage as a member of the cast.
"The thing one has to remember about Iron Man..." PJ wrote about her adaptation of the Iron Woman person for this Super-hero project. "….is that without the suit, he’s just a man. Ok, he’s just a billionaire playboy, but still, just a man. He doesn’t actually have any super powers. No radioactive spider bite, not extra-terrestrial parents, no mythic hammer and strength and no super human growth formula."
Iron Man wears a suit that is powered by an Arc Reactor, a personal power factory in his chest. The suit is what people know will get the job done, that and, at least in the latest incarnation of Iron Man, he does it with wit, panache and showmanship.
Since her defense against her own depression is making people laugh, she now, twice a week, rehearses with a new improv group at Meadville Community Theater. "Each week I post as my Facebook status as “Off to therapy”, because for me that’s what the arts are.
"People ask me, how do you get up there and perform in front of people… and the answer is easy. I like to make people laugh." she says.
If I can make someone laugh, if I can make them smile the reward for myself is tenfold.
Recently she was playing the role of Granny Addams in the Addam's Family, where, as a 102 year old woman making comments about modern life, she was able to repeatedly bring the audience to laughter. "I also peed my pants on stage every night and that brought down the house."
She admitted that it was even hard for her to not to join in the laughter.
" It’s the very best kind of therapy that I have ever had."
"The theater is my arc reactor, keeping the jagged bits of emotional shrapnel out of my heart, and comedy is my super suit. It saves me, and maybe, just maybe, others too."
PJ Vogt is Iron Woman.
More in this series: http://richardsayer.weebly.com/super-hero-series.html
"I was in elementary school the first time they gave me happy pills. I remember that my mom gave them to me with applesauce before school each morning. I wasn’t a troubled kid, I just had too many emotions for the normal 4th grader."
In high school PJ realized she liked to make people laugh.
Today she uses self deprecating humor to get snickers, though she does boldly say "I'm the only one who can call me fat!"
When PJ returned home to Northwest Pennsylvania, after her husband got out of the military, she jumped into community theatre. First as a costume designer and then finally, after pushing away her insecurities, she joined everyone on stage as a member of the cast.
"The thing one has to remember about Iron Man..." PJ wrote about her adaptation of the Iron Woman person for this Super-hero project. "….is that without the suit, he’s just a man. Ok, he’s just a billionaire playboy, but still, just a man. He doesn’t actually have any super powers. No radioactive spider bite, not extra-terrestrial parents, no mythic hammer and strength and no super human growth formula."
Iron Man wears a suit that is powered by an Arc Reactor, a personal power factory in his chest. The suit is what people know will get the job done, that and, at least in the latest incarnation of Iron Man, he does it with wit, panache and showmanship.
Since her defense against her own depression is making people laugh, she now, twice a week, rehearses with a new improv group at Meadville Community Theater. "Each week I post as my Facebook status as “Off to therapy”, because for me that’s what the arts are.
"People ask me, how do you get up there and perform in front of people… and the answer is easy. I like to make people laugh." she says.
If I can make someone laugh, if I can make them smile the reward for myself is tenfold.
Recently she was playing the role of Granny Addams in the Addam's Family, where, as a 102 year old woman making comments about modern life, she was able to repeatedly bring the audience to laughter. "I also peed my pants on stage every night and that brought down the house."
She admitted that it was even hard for her to not to join in the laughter.
" It’s the very best kind of therapy that I have ever had."
"The theater is my arc reactor, keeping the jagged bits of emotional shrapnel out of my heart, and comedy is my super suit. It saves me, and maybe, just maybe, others too."
PJ Vogt is Iron Woman.
More in this series: http://richardsayer.weebly.com/super-hero-series.html