The path to get there was a long and winding road, one that took the Mohonasen High School graduate from student, to aspiring actor, to aspiring playwright, to cross-country pool hustler, to scraping by on catering jobs in New York City, to model and, finally, to acclaimed experimental filmmaker. “Honestly,” Plumb said, “it was all an accident.” That “accident” has led to a career of more than 200 short films, three of which will be featured selections Sunday at 2 p.
m. at the GE Theater at Proctors as part of the Asbury Short Film Concert. A self-described “shy kid” growing up, Plumb, now 53, found her passion for theater in her late teens under the tutelage of longtime Capital Region educator Don Rittner.
That led her to a summer as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts and eventually to SUNY New Paltz, where she studied for five years but remains “a math class away from graduating.” Just before she was scheduled to graduate, Plumb took a four-month road trip with a friend before eventually landing in New York City working “the stupidest jobs.” While working for a caterer that delivered food to fashion shoots, she was discovered by photographer Mario Sorrenti and, quite unexpectedly for Plumb, ended up as a model.
Still, Plumb had a creative itch she needed to scratch, and when she expressed to her friends that her ideas weren’t working when she put them on a page, one of them suggested she try putting them on film and .