The Jester Interview:
Susannah Perlman
After
their Purim appearance in New York (reviewed
3/14/09), the Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad show, led by stand-up
comedian and musical theater singer Susannah Perlman, embarked on an
extensive tour of the Western U.S. well into April. But before they set
out, Jester spoke with Perlman about how she invented the idea for the
show several years ago, what inspired her to do it, and how it’s grown
over the years. We’ll keep you posted when they return.
Jester: How did you get into comedy?
Susannah Perlman: A million years ago, when the New York Comedy
Club was in the 40s, I took a comedy class there, which was probably the
most dismal place to take a class. It would rain in the middle of the
class. The roof was always leaking. That’s how I got into it. I had
always been interested in it. My brother used to collect comedy albums
when I was growing up. It was just taking the leap. I took a class and
started doing comedy, bombing more than I’d really like to admit. Then …
I had come to New York to pursue musical theatre and was quickly
becoming disillusioned with the whole process, mostly because I didn’t
like a lot of the music and where Broadway was heading, and I liked
comedy because I was able to write for myself.
I put together a little sketch group, and after the sketch group I
started working on more of a musical comedy act, and just started coming
up with music and recorded an album, and did a music video. It got a
little bit of a bump -- one of the songs went on the radio and my music
video won a couple of awards. It was really fun, but not very profitable
as I found out. I think shortly after that, around 2000, I came up with
the idea for Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad and it took off.
J: How did you come up with the idea for the Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad
show?
SP: With my own act, I was doing a lot of comedy shows and burlesque
shows as well as spoken-word hip-hop shows. In each of these
environments I kept running into women who happened to be Jewish who had
these acts that spoke profoundly to me. I thought what if they were all
together in one show and had a little bit more variety. Since I had a
musical theatre and dance background, I thought about having a lot of
dance and campy stuff. That’s how it came together and was successful
right out of the starting gate. Then we began to tour and were as
successful when we hit the road. That was six years ago, and here we
are.
J: Who are some of the regulars who are more musical oriented or
burlesque oriented, who are on the show?
SP: It’s hard to say because I rotate 30 girls in and out of the show. I
have people on both coasts who do the show. There’s those you saw,
Ophira Eisenberg -- and there’s Vanessa Hidary, Rena Zager, Rachel
Feinstein, Michelle Collins, Julie Goldman, Mindy Raf, Mira Stroika,
Shawn Pelofsky, who works with me in L.A., Dana Eagle, Mystical Golden,
Jessica Kirson, Hilary Schwartz. I try to find really fun, smart Jewish
women who say something kind of poignant in their act -- they have
something that’s a little bit beyond making people laugh, there’s a
little bit more of a story there.
J: How long has the Jewish burlesque scene been going on in New York or
how has that developed?
SP: I don’t know, can I say that I started it? I don’t know, but Nice
Jewish Girls definitely inspired the whole [trend]. I’m starting to see
other shows that are more into [the burlesque], and I think people who
run those shows would admit to that. When we started the show, I didn’t
know any Jewish girls who did burlesque. We’ve had the Shiksa Dancers,
and then all these girls started coming out of the woodwork, like [says
in drawl] ‘I’m Jewish, I’ll take off mah clothes!” And it went from
there. It was really a selling point that there were Jewish girls doing
burlesque. We had people like Little Brooklyn and the Shlep Sisters, and
then girls on the other coast.
What was really important to me was I wanted a really fun dance element
to it. We just decided we would have a duo that would be especially for
the show and do these rather elaborate dance numbers, much more than
what we had. When we had burlesque it was just girls doing stripteases.
Simple dance routines but nothing elaborate.
J: How often are you on the road with the show? How is it different than
doing it back home in New York?
SP: This year we’re going to be traveling a lot. We just started doing
the things where we’re out for two or three weeks now. We’re about to go
on one. The thing is, appreciation wise, people are very appreciative
because things like this don’t come to their town on a regular basis. So
we really get a hodgepodge of audiences. It depends what city we’re in,
what newspaper decided to cover us, what our demographics will be. We’ve
had anything from 18 to 80 show up in our audience and love it just the
same. Young people like it because it’s very relevant and fun, and
there’s a hipness to it, and old people like it because there’s a lot of
retro style to it like they remember from the Catskills. We meet a lot
of transplants on the road -- people who used to live in New York or
have relatives and come here on a regular basis. So it’s something
that’s nice, it’s like a little piece of the East Village coming to
them.
J: Who are some of the most unusual performers who have been in the
show?
SP: We used to work with this girl in Pittsburgh named Phat Mandee and she
would put her fist in her mouth and sing L’Chaim. We’ve had a girl named
Calky, from Australia, who is an amazing hula-hooper. It’s amazing, when
we started I was just going for broke looking for wacky Jewish women who
did things that were a little unusual whether it was comedy or movement
or song, just a little different.
J: Are there other groups you perform with, shows you do or regular
stand-up?
SP: I have my other regular stand-up and my other little things that pop
up. I still have my comedy music act that has nothing to do with
Judaism, more like ‘love gone wrong.’ I did a show called ‘The
Heartbreak Show,’ a couple months ago at The Slipper Room. It was more
like a game show. People came on and told their love gone wrong stories
and then I would sing songs, and we had judges. I was involved with the
‘Music of the Joke’ contest at Stand Up NY recently. I work at Stand Up
NY and Gotham Comedy Club pretty regularly now.
J: Do you have further plans with ‘Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad,’ to
expand that show?
SP: There’s an idea that we were approached by a film company about
doing a feature about the background -- our lives, which are pretty
crazy. It may evolve into a reality show but that’s still in the
beginning stages.
Perlman also has extensive notes on the tour experiences on her
Facebook page that can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=670931872&v=app_2347471856&viewas=698110677 |