I don't mean to alarm you, but during my recent interview with Heather Herkelman, the area performer revealed something shocking and rather upsetting: Hawaii, it turns out, isn't perfect.

In recent years, 36-year-old actor Dana Moss-Peterson has been asked to play several characters far younger than himself.

During flashback scenes in the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's 2013 Death of a Salesman, Moss-Peterson played Biff Loman when he was a high-school senior and local football hero. For more than half of 2011's Leaving Iowa at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, his Don Browning was a younger teen enduring an excruciating family vacation. In New Ground Theatre's 2012 Mr. Marmalade, the actor - not in flashback - portrayed Larry, a comically morose, suicidal five-year-old. (It's that kind of play.)

Consequently, it makes a sort of sense when Moss-Peterson says his interest in theatre began when he was even younger than Larry.

As someone who's been privileged to write about local theatre for nearly 10 years now, I can't begin to describe the sheer tonnage* of correspondence I've amassed from people who are curious about upcoming area stage productions. Please allow me, then, this attempt at answering all your questions about the forthcoming winter-theatre season through just a few of the hundreds** of letters, e-mails, and texts I've recently received on this subject***.

*Perhaps an exaggeration.

**Definitely an exaggeration.

***Some of which I may have made up.

"It was third grade," says actor Marc Ciemiewicz, recalling his stage debut. "I went to Catholic school, and it was the Christmas pageant, and I was given the solo for my class - 'I'm Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas.' And my mom, to this day, still tells the story of the gentleman in the audience who tried to give me a standing ovation ... but his wife pulled him back down."