VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've ever had at a reading?
JEANNE: A few years ago I was doing my solo play Sally on the Mount (a play where a sex worker tells her life story in relation to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount) at a hotel lounge in Vieques, Puerto Rico, over Christmas. For some reason I kept getting invited to do this show at weird venues around the country and this hotel, with its overly tanned zombie-faced guests sipping their gigantic tropical drinks wondering who the hell this lady jumping on the bar was, was up there. There was this long staircase that I had to come down to enter the bar/lounge area and begin the show, very Hello Dolly, and I start down it, in my costume which was fishnets and gladiator boots, some latex shorts and a ripped CBGB t-shirt, black wig. A nice get up. People often said things to me while I was making my entrance, the show had a big improvisational feel, I riffed with the audience a lot but this night I came down the stairs and was about to begin the monologue and this drunk guy looks me up and down and says, loudly, "DANG JOR TALL!" It totally threw me off. I'm not that tall, maybe 5'7 in heels and I also couldn't help but think, I'm half-naked, I've got fifty pounds of make-up on and a wig and I'm on an island in Puerto Rico doing my lower east side parody of solo shows and the art world of New York in the '80s and the sex industry and all you can worry about is my extremely average height? I moved away from him as if he was the scariest heckler of all time, possibly dangerous, and managed to get the beginning of the show back on track. As a performer you worry that people will not understand your material or that they will not like it, not like you, not like your writing. You don't worry that audience members might think you are a brunette if you're blond or that you're blue-eyed when you have brown eyes. It was an odd heckle and now every time I perform I hope, above all, that no one will hurl some lie at me, like "Dang You're Left-Handed!"
Come see Jeanne Darst perform at Vermin on the Mount on Sunday, January 9 at 8pm.
