![FRINGEFAMOUS FIVE: MO PERRY
Gremlin Theatre opened a new production of Hedda Gabler this past weekend. Mo Perry plays the title role, and was nice enough to FringeFamous Five us like we’ve never been FringeFamous Fived before. Enjoy!
For those unfamiliar with the play, what’s exciting about Hedda Gabler? Why should people attend?
MO PERRY: Oh geez, it’s sex and death and desire and entrapment. People’s lives are at stake. Yes, it’s classical theater, but classical theater didn’t become classic because it’s pretty and boring. There is juice and life and throbbing, aching fear and delusion and desperate hope for beauty and redemption. It takes all the themes of my life, my life—freedom, courage, womanhood in a man’s world, a crazed resistence to convention and expectation, autonomy at all costs, fear of the absurd, mad love for a man you know you can’t be with—and puts them in a sack to wrestle. It makes me shake just typing about it! God, come see it! Shake!
OK — I just asked my sister, the (much more calm and rational) law student, who came to our preview tonight. I posed this question and she said, “Because it’s not your typical female role. It’s not something you need any background information to enjoy, unlike a Shakespeare production — where you basically either need to know the plot beforehand or be really good at deciphering Shakespeare’s language. It’s surprising. It’s not about some Victorian woman who likes to bake bread.”
So. There you go. There’s no bread baking. And the costumes are pretty. And I bought fake hair.
“Hedda Gabler” is a fantastic role. Can you tell us a bit about how you ended up with this opportunity?
MP: Sure. Craig Johnson and I created it. Well, it was a mixture of willfulness, providence, and leaps of faith on the part of many people. Yeah, let’s go with that. Craig Johnson and I were boozing one night at Rudolph’s after a rehearsal for Torch Theater’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and we started talking about Hedda and how awesome it would be to work on it together some day. We’d worked on Ibsen together before (Ghosts at TRP), and we both have mad love for Hedda Gabler. At that time, we chalked it up to, “somewhere, some day.” Lo and behold a few months later, an e-mail went out saying that an unexpected opening had popped up in Gremlin’s new space during March, and if anyone was in the market for a rental opportunity, this was your chance. I forwarded that e-mail to Craig, with my own message: “Hedda…?”. Next thing I know, I was being copied on an e-mail to [Gremlin Theatre A.D.] Peter Hansesn, pitching the show. After a couple weeks of hemming and hawing, we got the green light. Gremlin wasn’t planning on producing anything so soon after Fool for Love, but for some reason they agreed to do this. And here we are. Holy God.
What has been the most challenging part of working on this role?
MP: Just going there, night after night. That place where Hedda Gabler lives, and where I meet her. This is not a happy woman. She’s powerful, fierce, magnetic, and smart, but she’s not happy. And there’s the sheer fact of the quantity and quality of actresses who have tackled her before me. When a role is so iconic, it can be hard to find something new and genuine to say about it, or with it. It has been my great honor and privilege and terror to attempt it anyway. There’s a line in an episode of “Slings and Arrows”, when this famous movie star is in rehearsals for Hamlet, and he says something to the effect of, “I can’t go onstage and say those lines because everyone will just be hearing all the actors who have said those lines before me; they’ll just be listening to me acting.” That’s how this is. The thing that comforts me is that I intersect this character in a totally unique place. There is no “pure” Hedda Gabler. There is a possible set of interpretations, and an infinite set of ways to manifest those interpretations. And I’m uniquely qualified to deliver Mo’s Hedda. I see it mathematically, geographically, as a literal intersection. The place where this character meets what I have to bring to it. That’s something specific and interesting and worth seeing, I think. I hope! It takes some of the mad pressure off, anyway, and thank god for that.
In your estimation, what’s the most difficult part about being an actor in the Twin Cities?
MP: I’m probably not the best qualified person to answer this quesion, seeing as how I’ve never been an actor anywhere else, except college in Lawrence, Kansas. You know, it’s hard. Anything worthwhile is hard. You wring your heart out and you’re paid in nickels and the occasional sandwich. But I’m not sure this would feel as good if I were rolling in dough. I have a wonderfully flexible, secure day job; I have a respectable freelance writing career, which I hope to expand; I do theatrical work that I love, exclusively. It’s a life. There are other ways of having a life, but this one is pretty good for me, for now. Then again, I’ve never considered myself to be soley, or even primarily, “an actor.” I’m in love with too many things to dedicate myself to one label, one way of being. I’m a perpetual student and a traveler and a thinker and an eater and a writer and a drinker…and an actor. You know? Hallelujah.
A majority of professional Twin Cities theatre companies routinely do not pay their actors a living wage. In your opinion, what responsibility (if any) does a theatre company have to the actors working on its shows?
MP: To put in as much sweat, blood, and tears as they do. And let me tell you, Gremlin is doing that and then some. No one ever promised me I’d get to play the role of my life and be paid for it. Honestly, the opportunity to play the role of my life is enough. What else would I be doing with my evenings otherwise? Working on my paint-by-number Jesus? When I come in to rehearsal, Tamatha Miller, Carl Schoenborn, and Peter Hansen are already there, painting, building, hanging…and they’re there long after I leave at the end of the night. They’re putting in at least as much effort as I am to create this transient, fleeting piece of work, and probably much more. The fact that they are creating a forum for me to do this difficult and beautiful work…gosh, I have so much gratitude, there’s just no room for much else. I want to pay them for giving me this opportunity, I do.
Now, I don’t always feel this way. Lord knows I have done many a show where what I put in was not matched by what I received, as I’m sure is true for all of us theatricians. But my friend (the wonderful actor and singer) Xavier Rice says, “A theater has got to pay me. They either need to pay my pocket, my spirit, or my resume.” And when you can get two out of those three, I think you’re doing pretty damn well.
Mo Perry has worked with many Twin Cities theaters, including Starting Gate, Theater in the Round, Torch Theater, Actors Theater of Minnesota, Gremlin Theatre, Theatre Limina, In the Basement Productions, Hang Kitty Productions, and Joseph Scrimshaw productions. By day, she is an administrative assistant at the University of Minnesota and a freelance writer.](http://10.media.tumblr.com/TnzimowIbl2dnpkbkjiQ6uERo1_500.jpg)
FRINGEFAMOUS FIVE: MO PERRY
Gremlin Theatre opened a new production of Hedda Gabler this past weekend. Mo Perry plays the title role, and was nice enough to FringeFamous Five us like we’ve never been FringeFamous Fived before. Enjoy!
For those unfamiliar with the play, what’s exciting about Hedda Gabler? Why should people attend?
MO PERRY: Oh geez, it’s sex and death and desire and entrapment. People’s lives are at stake. Yes, it’s classical theater, but classical theater didn’t become classic because it’s pretty and boring. There is juice and life and throbbing, aching fear and delusion and desperate hope for beauty and redemption. It takes all the themes of my life, my life—freedom, courage, womanhood in a man’s world, a crazed resistence to convention and expectation, autonomy at all costs, fear of the absurd, mad love for a man you know you can’t be with—and puts them in a sack to wrestle. It makes me shake just typing about it! God, come see it! Shake!
OK — I just asked my sister, the (much more calm and rational) law student, who came to our preview tonight. I posed this question and she said, “Because it’s not your typical female role. It’s not something you need any background information to enjoy, unlike a Shakespeare production — where you basically either need to know the plot beforehand or be really good at deciphering Shakespeare’s language. It’s surprising. It’s not about some Victorian woman who likes to bake bread.”
So. There you go. There’s no bread baking. And the costumes are pretty. And I bought fake hair.
“Hedda Gabler” is a fantastic role. Can you tell us a bit about how you ended up with this opportunity?
MP: Sure. Craig Johnson and I created it. Well, it was a mixture of willfulness, providence, and leaps of faith on the part of many people. Yeah, let’s go with that. Craig Johnson and I were boozing one night at Rudolph’s after a rehearsal for Torch Theater’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and we started talking about Hedda and how awesome it would be to work on it together some day. We’d worked on Ibsen together before (Ghosts at TRP), and we both have mad love for Hedda Gabler. At that time, we chalked it up to, “somewhere, some day.” Lo and behold a few months later, an e-mail went out saying that an unexpected opening had popped up in Gremlin’s new space during March, and if anyone was in the market for a rental opportunity, this was your chance. I forwarded that e-mail to Craig, with my own message: “Hedda…?”. Next thing I know, I was being copied on an e-mail to [Gremlin Theatre A.D.] Peter Hansesn, pitching the show. After a couple weeks of hemming and hawing, we got the green light. Gremlin wasn’t planning on producing anything so soon after Fool for Love, but for some reason they agreed to do this. And here we are. Holy God.
What has been the most challenging part of working on this role?
MP: Just going there, night after night. That place where Hedda Gabler lives, and where I meet her. This is not a happy woman. She’s powerful, fierce, magnetic, and smart, but she’s not happy. And there’s the sheer fact of the quantity and quality of actresses who have tackled her before me. When a role is so iconic, it can be hard to find something new and genuine to say about it, or with it. It has been my great honor and privilege and terror to attempt it anyway. There’s a line in an episode of “Slings and Arrows”, when this famous movie star is in rehearsals for Hamlet, and he says something to the effect of, “I can’t go onstage and say those lines because everyone will just be hearing all the actors who have said those lines before me; they’ll just be listening to me acting.” That’s how this is. The thing that comforts me is that I intersect this character in a totally unique place. There is no “pure” Hedda Gabler. There is a possible set of interpretations, and an infinite set of ways to manifest those interpretations. And I’m uniquely qualified to deliver Mo’s Hedda. I see it mathematically, geographically, as a literal intersection. The place where this character meets what I have to bring to it. That’s something specific and interesting and worth seeing, I think. I hope! It takes some of the mad pressure off, anyway, and thank god for that.
In your estimation, what’s the most difficult part about being an actor in the Twin Cities?
MP: I’m probably not the best qualified person to answer this quesion, seeing as how I’ve never been an actor anywhere else, except college in Lawrence, Kansas. You know, it’s hard. Anything worthwhile is hard. You wring your heart out and you’re paid in nickels and the occasional sandwich. But I’m not sure this would feel as good if I were rolling in dough. I have a wonderfully flexible, secure day job; I have a respectable freelance writing career, which I hope to expand; I do theatrical work that I love, exclusively. It’s a life. There are other ways of having a life, but this one is pretty good for me, for now. Then again, I’ve never considered myself to be soley, or even primarily, “an actor.” I’m in love with too many things to dedicate myself to one label, one way of being. I’m a perpetual student and a traveler and a thinker and an eater and a writer and a drinker…and an actor. You know? Hallelujah.
A majority of professional Twin Cities theatre companies routinely do not pay their actors a living wage. In your opinion, what responsibility (if any) does a theatre company have to the actors working on its shows?
MP: To put in as much sweat, blood, and tears as they do. And let me tell you, Gremlin is doing that and then some. No one ever promised me I’d get to play the role of my life and be paid for it. Honestly, the opportunity to play the role of my life is enough. What else would I be doing with my evenings otherwise? Working on my paint-by-number Jesus? When I come in to rehearsal, Tamatha Miller, Carl Schoenborn, and Peter Hansen are already there, painting, building, hanging…and they’re there long after I leave at the end of the night. They’re putting in at least as much effort as I am to create this transient, fleeting piece of work, and probably much more. The fact that they are creating a forum for me to do this difficult and beautiful work…gosh, I have so much gratitude, there’s just no room for much else. I want to pay them for giving me this opportunity, I do.
Now, I don’t always feel this way. Lord knows I have done many a show where what I put in was not matched by what I received, as I’m sure is true for all of us theatricians. But my friend (the wonderful actor and singer) Xavier Rice says, “A theater has got to pay me. They either need to pay my pocket, my spirit, or my resume.” And when you can get two out of those three, I think you’re doing pretty damn well.
Mo Perry has worked with many Twin Cities theaters, including Starting Gate, Theater in the Round, Torch Theater, Actors Theater of Minnesota, Gremlin Theatre, Theatre Limina, In the Basement Productions, Hang Kitty Productions, and Joseph Scrimshaw productions. By day, she is an administrative assistant at the University of Minnesota and a freelance writer.
