After high school in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, and a brief stint at nearby Worcester State College, Mike Shugrue hit the road and hitchhiked around the country for five years. Afterward, he returned to Boston and worked as a travel counselor at AAA. “I went to open mic nights and did comedy,” he says. “It was an early experience that led to what I’m doing now.” Shugrue first visited Eugene in 1996, a year before he married his wife Patricia, a North Eugene high school grad. “We thought about moving,” he says, “but we stayed 18 more years in North Smithfield, Rhode Island.” When he was laid off from his financial services job in 2002, the firm paid for college. “I got a psychology degree from Worcester State,” he says. “I started working in human services in my late 40s.” He first worked with disabled adults in independent living, but soon was working with kids. In 2010, he began a collaboration with Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, involving kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities in theatrical productions. “It was eight years ago,” he notes, “that I finally found a passion.” He and Patricia moved west in 2014. A year later, he found work as a program supervisor with Full Access, an agency that supports people with disabilities who live independently or with their families. In the past two years, he has launched an improv theater group called Stray Cast, for adults with disabilities, that meets twice a month at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, and a similar group for high school age kids that meets weekly at C-Space in Springfield. “Improv helps with social skill building and peer interactions,” he says, “in a safe, respectful area.”

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