Then in the middle of his senior year an English teacher named Dan Larkin asked Bill if he would come audition for the senior play. Bill won the lead role in the play Harvey, and set foot on stage as an actor for the first time. The show was a hit. The next play was a community theatre production of the Pulitzer prize winning drama The Subject Was Roses. "I was hooked. It was more fun than doing stand up and more fulfilling than playing in the band. And I was good at it. Besides, the band always seemed more interested in drinking and carousing than in rehearsing new songs. I left home that fall to start in the drama program at the State University College at Geneseo, NY. When I came back at Christmas I heard that the Knight Ryders' van had run head on into an oncoming truck on their way home from a gig. All but one had been killed. I would have been in that van."

Bill spent the next four years at Geneseo consumed by his new passion. As well as acting in dozens of plays, he earned both a BA in drama and BS in speech communication. "My father insisted that I get my teaching certification. Something to fall back on. Not a bad idea given the odds against ever making a living as an actor." (more)