How did you get involved with The Orange Person?

Jeremy Bloom had won a Planet Connections Artist Grant in 2010 and he was working on The Orange Person under that grant.   He was doing the first staged reading of the work at the 2011 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity and hadn't found anyone to play Aunt Joan.    He remembered me from the MTWorks' production of 4 Variations of Mee: Big Love and sent me an email telling me about the show and asking me if I would like to be involved.   I of course said yes and have enjoyed watching the play as well as the character really grow over the time I have been part of the piece. 

Where did you draw inspiration for your character?

Well, didn't come from Terlingua, Texas (The setting of The Orange Person) but I did come from a very small rural town in Oregon that had a population of about 4,000 people when I was growing up there.  There were a lot of women that were a lot like I saw Aunt Joan.   They dealt with what life gave them very matter of factly and when something needed to be done - if there wasn't one of the men folk around to do it - well they just went on ahead and did it themselves.  Strong pioneer types.  Could bake a pie, plow the back 40 and whip up a new dress for the youngest daughter without batting an eye.   So I mixed that up with a little bit of country and western star Minnie Pearl and went for it.   

How has the play and your role evolved since it's first incarnation?

My character has changed a great deal from the first reading.   In the first incarnation she literally jogged in during one scene and went out jogging with one of the other characters and sang about Pumpkin pie.   I did think that the character was lots of fun to do and I described her as sort of the Sue Sylvester of Terlingua.   When I got the script for the fully staged production that went up last November at the Gene Frankel Theater, Aunt Joan had radically changed and had become a significant part of the ensemble. I still get to sing about "Pumpkin Pie" but now instead of jogging we added a little dance routine to it.   One of the many fun things that Jeremy and Brian Rady (who along with Laura Dunn are the writers of The Orange Person) did as they wrote the play was add in little bits from actors that are the parts.   Either something they heard them say, something about them or something from their shared history.  At one of the rehearsals of the staged reading I had mentioned that since my eyebrows were so light that if I didn't "put them on with make-up I didn't look like I had any."  Well that has now become a part of Aunt Joan with of course a little theatrical license.  I am so happy to be able to play Aunt Joan again in this latest production.  She is just the type of character that I revel in as a performer and she has become one of my favorite characters to do right up there with Queen Victoria in Anaïs Nin Goes To Hell and Mama Fratelli in Save the Goondocks.

Rady & Bloom
present

THE ORANGE PERSON
by Jeremy Bloom, Laura Dunn & Brian Rady

May 19, 29, 21, 25 & 26 @8pm

IRT 154 Christopher St, #3B
New York

www.TheOrangePerson.com