Everything you always wanted to know about local theater (but were too afraid to ask).

Teresa Del Piero is a local stage actress, theater supporter, as well as the president of the Monterey County Theater Alliance. She's acted with PacRep, Magic Circle, Paper Wing, Western Stage, MPC, all of them. But she says she only caught the theater bug by happenstance, that as a young girl in Pittsburgh, she had been singled out for visual art talent and was on track to become an artist.

"In high school I had to take an elective course and the health requirement was full," she says. "There was an acting class available. Acting level 1. That for me, in my sophomore year, was what got me on my theater track."

And she had the fortune to be at a high school that had the resources to propel students into a high level of theater work. It had two stages: a proscenium stage and a thrust stage. Del Piero's first play, as a senior, was in Robinson Jeffers' Madea.

"That gives you a sense of the caliber of what was happening there," she says.

She went on to study acting at Boston University, taught and toured in Boston city schools, and came out to California with a job at a children's' theater company. In 1985 she and her husband, Eric, moved to Monterey County.

"I have a life with my husband and I manage his medical practice," she says. "But you can't keep me off the stage for too long."

And that pretty much encapsulates the subject of the Arts in Progress talk she's giving at Museum of Monterey: "From Art to the Theater, My Creative Journey." She'll discuss that journey and the vantage into the local theater world it's given her, including insights on the state of theater in Monterey County.

She'll also give a peek at what it's like on the stage and behind the curtain. Like when a hearing aid blows out and begins to squeal, or how audience members tend to forget to turn off their cell phones again after intermission, or how quickly and quietly costumes changes happen backstage.

"When [former Monterey mayor] Dan Albert did a little walk-on part at MPC Follies in February, I remember him walking backstage and saying 'I can't believe how busy it is back there.' The audience doesn't get that. There may be 2 people on stage, but 20 people backstage getting ready."

And in light of the closures of Stardust Playhouse, Magic Circle Theatre, Bruce Ariss Wharf Theater, the budget cutbacks at Monterey Peninsula College Theatre, the renovations and temporary closure of Forest Theater, the subsequent inactivity of the Forest Theater Guild and scaled back shows of PacRep, what does she think of the state of local theater?

"I saw Sweet Charity at MPC a [few] weeks ago, and Into the Woods [at Western Stage] yesterday and I'm amazed at the incredible talent here.

"I think it's holding its own."

And maybe that kind of optimism explains why she's the president of the Monterey County Theater Alliance.

Teresa Del Piero speaks 7:30-8:30pm (7pm doors) at Museum of Monterey, 5 Custom House Plaza, Monterey. $10/general. 624-6111, www.ArtsHabitat.org.