ROCHELLE
Do you think I’m a bully?
MARY BETH
I think you’re a marvelous crusty glamorous older person. People love you -- you have a Drama Desk award, you were nominated for a Tony and how many Daytime Emmys do you have?
ROCHELLE
How do you know all that?
MARY BETH
I Googled you. I Google everybody.
During the following ROCHELLE pulls her hair back into a bun then crosses to sink and brushes teeth.
ROCHELLE
Well do me favor, don’t Google me anymore, and don’t remind me of all those awards -- it’s a poetic portrait of failure -- look at me now -- it hurts every time I read it in my bio. It just screams unfulfilled potential. This is my first role in years that doesn’t involve judicial robes or a gardening hat. I’ve been reduced to this little sliver of soap life. That mean little sliver of soap you should throw out but you can't because you can't waste it - it might be your last sliver -- there's no job in sight - the unemployment's running out ...
MARY BETH
Rochelle, I saw you just a year ago in that play at the Public and you were fabulous -- and you weren’t wearing a gardening hat -- you were wearing ...
ROCHELLE
Denim -- I was wearing a denim skirt and clogs...
MARY BETH
You had that marvelous monologue -- I was in tears --
ROCHELLE
When she found out she had lost her pension? The play was called Dead-End. Then I did an industrial, spent a week in Las Vegas playing a woman in a coma -- suffering from Alzheimer’s. I've never been so drunk in my life.
In the 1970s, I met my own Glinda when I got a job as the Wicked Witch in a Traveling Playhouse production of The Wizard of Oz, with original music and lyrics by Richard Kinter. My onstage nemesis was a veteran actress, the remarkable Miss Lee Sanders, who always left me — the poor Wicked Witch — writhing in defeat with one quick wave of her magic wand.
As produced by Kay Rockefeller, the Traveling Playhouse offered a repertoire of fairy tales and adventure stories for children of all ages. Lee not only played Glinda the Good the Witch, but also Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother and the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio— always with two layers of false eyelashes, midnight-blue mascara and Revlon’s Cherries in the Snowlipstick.
Lee was born on June 6, 1914 in Norfolk, Virginia, and she never lost her sweet Southern accent — not even when she would sweep onstage and say, “I’m Glinda, the Good Witch of the No-wuth."
The next morning we met in the lobby of the hotel for our trip to the booksigning. And that’s when Pat Conroy said, very excitedly, to me, "I have a great idea for you, kid. You should do a one-woman show about Flannery O’Connor.”
"Flannery O’Connor? I said. "Just refresh my memory. “
"Why she’s only one of the best American writers of all time!” Pat said.
"Oh, her! "
A Memoir
Best Night Ever
A play by Barbara Suter
Directed by Christopher Scott
FringeNYC
Finally Flannery
Written/Performed by Barbara Suter
Directed by Michael Sexton
New York Theater Workshop
Lee Sanders 1944
THE BIG GIANT BOOKSTORE
Best Solo Show Estrogenius Festival
Places Please
By Barbara Suter
Directed by Lianne Kressin
PDW FESTIVAL
(Click on title for full article)
By Barbara Suter
The Clyde Fitch Report Nov. 2015
Jackie stood just outside the entrance of the Molly Pitcher Bar & Grill on High Street. She reapplied her lipstick, fluffed her hair and then made what she hoped would be a spectacular entrance at the bar. She smiled her runway smile as she paused in the doorway just long enough to invite appreciative glances from all corners of the room, her halo of Shalimar perfume wafted playfully through the air. In her fantasy there was applause.
The young man behind the bar caught her eye. He looked like a small town Steve McQueen. His face crinkled into a boyish grin. He placed a welcoming cocktail napkin on the bar and Jackie happily accepted his invitation.
“I’ll have a Vodka Tonic,” she said as she eased onto the barstool. “And a turkey club on toast with mustard -- hold the mayo.”
“Coming right up. The name is Ozzie -- Ozzie Heffner.”
“Well, I'm pleased to meet you. I’m Jackie Nations.”
“I like the name and -- I like the lady,” Ozzie said and winked. Jackie flashed him her million-dollar smile. She could tell the boy had high hopes.
PEG
I was bitten by a groundhog when I was a kid. Poor thing was out of its little ground hog mind, running in circles in our backyard. I was playing with my cousin, Billy, and he said we should catch the groundhog in a cardboard box and keep it for a pet so we did and I reached down into the box and starting petting it. Do you know how rare that is? That's like a fucking triple play in the world of wild groundhogs and he looked at me with the sweetest little eyes and then I heard my mother come out of the back door and the ground hog got scared and he bit me-out of instinct - and he wouldn't let go -- hung on for dear life. Like we were connected somehow -- his giant groundhog teeth sunk right here in the bend of my elbow. See, here, I still have the scar.
(PEG shows the scar on her arm.)
See it? Right here.
There is frantic knocking at JAKE/TEDDY apartment door.
JAKE (O.S.)
Teddy, Teddy…. TEDDY…. Let me in.
I stood, vacuum cleaner in hand, watching in amazement as flames licked the windowpanes of my apartment, black smoke shimmied up through the floorboards, a deep blue haze hung on the ceiling. My dark domain was suddenly transformed into a biblical-like cauldron of great portent. New Year’s Day 1981. Was this a sign? Was I being called by some greater power? I stood transfixed in a “metaphysical rapture” until my New Year’s Eve hangover cleared enough to realize my apartment was on fire. “Damn,” I said, dropping the vacuum nozzle and rushing down the long hallway that led to the front door. “Bowser,” I cried as I grabbed my keys and cigarettes. A big hound of a mutt lumbered out from under the couch and followed me through the door.
“Fire!! Fire!!” I shouted in the lobby of the building. Then I opened the vestibule door and rang all the buzzers. Neighbors were now scurrying out onto the street. The fire trucks screeched up Broadway. I held onto Bowser’s collar as we stood on the street staring up at the glowing conflagration. It was 20 degrees. The sidewalk was icy. Richard Kinter, my next door neighbor, found me shivering on the corner. He lived in 2B with his wife, three kids and four yappy terriers.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What a way to start the New Year!”
And, just at that moment, one of the firemen pointed up to the windows on the second floor. “Holy shit, there are people up there!” The fire truck was quickly re-positioned and the ladder started to deploy. The crowd on the street looked up and saw desperate faces, illuminated by the flames, standing mute behind the panes of glass. I realized they were pointing at my apartment.
“They’re dolls,” I shouted. “I’m a dollmaker.”
“What?” A fireman shouted.
“Dolls,” I repeated. “Soft sculpture. Art!”
The fireman gestured to the wheelman. “False alarm, Eddie,” he yelled over the din of noise. "It’s just art."
In Maggie Barlow's world, reality is overrated. So what if her singing career has hit a sour note or she's no longer the ingénue that she used to be? So what if she drinks and smokes a bit too much or likes to chat with a fairy godperson who appears to her from time to time? She's the queen of denial and an actress to boot—she can just take on the role of someone she likes better than her sorry self. Regrettably, that role is currently Dorothy in the Little Britches Theater Company's production of The Wizard of Oz.
"A delightfully witty and charming novel that makes you believe in fairy godmothers and the magic of love."—Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife.
It’s a Sunday. I arrive at the Big Giant Bookstore at noon for my shift, I shove my coat into my locker in the break room, clock in and make my way to the Children’s department, side stepping the people sprawled on the floor with their legs blocking the aisles along with piles of books, fast food bags, and dog-eared magazines. As I turn the corner, the noise level increases and I enter Hell which is what I call Sunday in Kids, any day in kids is hell, but Sunday is a special kind of hell. Delilah, our lead bookseller or Power Diva is at the desk; her display diagrams spread out over the keyboard. Our co-worker Ruby is adjusting her new Tina Turner wig and freshening her lipstick. “Good afternoon, ladies,” I say. “Who said good?” Ruby mumbles under her breath as she picks up a stack of books and disappears down an aisle. All my co-workers in Kids are women but none of us have children, in fact, from my observations none of us particularly like children. I check the schedule – hoping I’m not on it – that this is some sort of acid flashback and I’m just hallucinating that I work at The Big Giant Bookstore but no my name is clearly listed...
TEDDY crosses to door.
PEG
My cousin Billy yelled and my mother slammed into the house and came back out with her shotgun. My mother, the Annie Oakley of Little Falls, Minnesota
JAKE
I need some dry socks. My feet are freezing.
PEG
Mother hoisted her shotgun to her shoulder and aimed and I turned around. Trying to protect the groundhog because I knew she was going to shoot even though her own daughter, her own precious daughter was right in the line of fire.
TEDDY
You look like shit, my friend.
PEG
So I swung the little guy, hoping to protect him, hoping she'd hit me. Serve her right. Morning headlines: Woman Shoots Daughter, Groundhog Escapes.
JAKE
There was this girl at Hanratty’s -- with the longest lashes..
PEG
I swung the groundhog around and he flew up in the air - I looked at my mother and her finger was on the trigger and she squeezed and it felt like that moment would last forever, everything was in slow motion, everything was arrested in space
JAKE
What the fuck, Teddy? I'm just having a beer and then.....
PEG
The smell of the fresh mowed grass, the clear blue sky, the taste of gun powder -
TEDDY
It's all right, Jake. .
PEG
And my mother and I locked together forever in this moment, then the groundhog flew up surrounded by a halo of blood
JAKE
Yeah, yeah. I'm all right...
PEG
It was beautiful, the most beautiful moment of my life.
barbarasuter.com
2016