Profiles of Weekend Theater Personnel
Danette Perry
It’s unusual not to see Danette Perry at The Weekend Theater. She’s been a mainstay of the place since 2003, which is why she, along with Tom McLeod, was named a 2007 TWT Volunteer of the Year.
Her introduction to TWT came when
a coworker asked if she would like to go along to auditions for Big
River
, a musical based on the Huck Finn story. Danette hadn’t heard of TWT, nor had she done any acting. In addition, the show called for African American slaves, which didn’t exactly attract her.
“Hey, my people have been freed,” she quips. She was to
change her mind about both Big River
and TWT and gain a new avocation.
“It was so easy to audition,” Danette says. “I thought, ‘I can do this.’” A nurturer, she also worried that, if no African Americans showed up, the show wouldn’t go on. So she auditioned, got a part - as a slave - and had a great time.
“I got addicted,” she says “and wanted to do more.” And she certainly did! She’s been involved in 45 shows since 2003.
She has appeared on stage in 15
shows, including The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Little Shop
of Horrors, Ragtime, The Rocky Horror Show,
Urinetown, Working, and Keeley and Du
.
But her deepest love turned out to
be backstage work, which provides the foundation on which a show rests. She has
stage managed and/or produced 28 shows since she made her debut, including
Moon for the Misbegotten, The Laramie Project, Angels in
America, The Children’s Hour, Passion, and The
Triangle Factory Fire Project
. Often she appears on stage in the show she’s stage managing or producing.
She’s also helped with props, worked tech, and was Ralph
Hyman’s dresser for Visiting Mr. Green
.
In the current season Danette will appear in Vital
Signs and Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens,
and will produce and/or stage manage The Pillowman, For Colored Girls Who
Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enough, The History Boys,
and Vincent
.
“I’ve done almost every job in the theater except direct,”she says. “I love being bossy and productive and backstage work feeds into that. I feel like it is because of me and how I work that the actors look as good as they do and the audience enjoys the show as much as they do.”
She’s particularly admired for her
skill at managing children in a cast. In Brundibar
, she had 30 young actors to look out for. Everyone got on stage at the right time in the right costumes and there were no brawls backstage.
“All of them think I’m their age. I just get on their level and think back to how I felt. There are great kids coming through TWT.”
After a few years, she wanted to
see what it would be like to work in other theaters, so she got parts in
Sweet Charity, Once Upon a Mattress, and School House Rock
Live
with Community Theatre of Little Rock. Those were enjoyable experiences but her first love remains TWT.
A Little Rock native, Danette studied music at ASU, and has been accepted for the opera program at UALR, which she’ll begin in the winter session.
She expects her friends to be “blown away” by the fact that she’s going to study opera, since the songs they’ve heard her sing for auditions are soul or gospel. She herself hasn’t been an opera fan, but her voice teacher sugested the discipline because of her wide vocal range. (She can reach a B natural easily.)
Danette is single and works in the Medicare division of Arkansas Blue Cross-Blue Shield, where she’s been for ten years.She says she’s amenable to meeting interesting guys.
