French Stewart, Laurie Metcalf and Maile Flanagan in "Voice Lessons"
In a perfect world, I’d be doing both Justin Tanner shows at the same theater. I’d make my entrance in Day Drinkers and finish up just in time to come on in Voice Lessons. But unfortunately, the shows are at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA and the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, respectively. So for now, I’m doing both as best I can — Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for Voice Lessons and the Sunday matinee of Day Drinkers.
The shows are both hysterical and completely different animals — other than having the same playwright Justin Tanner, director Bart DeLorenzo, producers Gary Guidinger and Linda Toliver, and me! See? Different and not different!
Maile Flanagan
Voice Lessons stars the amazing Laurie Metcalf as a deluded vocal student and the incomparable French Stewart as her patient, tortured vocal coach. And then there’s me. You’ll have to come to find out what happens, but let’s just say I don’t need to iron one of my two costumes much, or, um, ever. We’ve done shows at the Zephyr, Sacred Fools and the Studio@Theatre Row in New York City, with side trips to Cal State Fresno and Cal State Stanislaus for good measure. Our merry band of misfits yucks it up the entire time, and for almost every production we force Gary to make a fake piano, which gives me great pleasure.
Day Drinkers, which is now playing at the Odyssey, stars a different assortment of Tanner oddballs, all of whom are wonderful. I think if you watched our speed-through before every show, you’d enjoy it almost as much as the show itself, without the costumes and with additional profanity. All are veterans of his plays and include Cody Chappel, Melissa Denton, Tom Fitzpatrick, Danielle Kennedy, Todd Lowe, Jonathan Palmer and Chloe Taylor. Usually we hang around the set (a bar, hello!) and have drinks afterwards and make Chloe, who plays a bartender and is also a bartender in real life, serve us drinks. That also gives me great pleasure…her work is never done.
One schizophrenic week recently I did Day Drinkers on Wednesday and Friday, and drove north to do Voice Lessons Saturday and Sunday up near Yosemite. In between those days I shot a commercial and recorded my cartoon, Naruto, which I’ve done for over 350 episodes and 30 video games where I play a screaming ninja. Thank God all the people I work with enjoy a little Merlot, that’s all I have to say. Or that I do …
Besides being able to do great plays that are comedy gold, the best part of these shows is the hanging out before, during and afterwards. In Voice Lessons I help Laurie do some quick changes and we usually comment about the audience in quiet whispers over 20 second intervals. In the meantime, French, one of the funniest people on and especially off stage that I’ve ever worked with, is usually miming something inappropriate to us in our transitions if he can get us to look over.
Maile Flanagan and Melissa Denton in "Day Drinkers"
My job is to do a psychotic dance beforehand to the pre-show music and spin into darkness while shrieking. We’re all so paranoid about some of our pre-show rituals that if one of us misses one, the other two are sure to chime in and remind us. That goes for the shtick, too — we have a rule of three, well, really two — if two of us like it, it’s in. See? We’re professional.
In Day Drinkers it’s usually a pre-show ritual to do our speed-through and try to make each other and Justin laugh, throw darts and bounce super balls all over the set — an opening gift from Melissa Denton that never ceases to annoy others and thrill me.
The rest of the week for me – it’s great! A little voice work on a video game or cartoon being a ninja or an alien or a fish, maybe a commercial, TV show or a bit part in a movie. If I’m lucky I get to wear a uniform (always a favorite – Grey’s Anatomy, Evan Almighty, upcoming movie Wrong), a pantsuit (Lab Rats, Transformers 3, 500 Days of Summer, Yes Man, dozens of others), or a towel (Weeds premiere, lucky Mary Louise Parker).
In between shows and figuring out my schedule, sometimes I remember I have an Emmy for voicing a pig … but that doesn’t help me on the 405 on the way to the theater, so I quickly forget about it.
This year my goal is to play a body on one of those crime shows. Seems fitting. And I can still make my call time at Day Drinkers and Voice Lessons.
Voice Lessons. Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks. Fri.-Sat. 8pm; Sun. 7:00pm. Through Nov 6. Tickets: $25. www.plays411com/voicelessons. 323-960-4412.
Day Drinkers. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, West LA Fri.-Sat. 8 pm; Sun.2 pm. Through Nov 20. Tickets: $25-30. www.odysseytheatre.com. 310-477-2055.
Maile Flanagan previously worked with Justin Tanner on Wife Swappers, Space Therapy, Oklahomo, Zombie Attack, Pot Mom and The Strip. Other LA theater credits include Bob’s Holiday Office Party, Pete’s Garage, Bad Seed and The Mismatch Game. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program in 2006 and was nominated again in 2007.
***All production photos by Ed Krieger
