Interview: Pascale Roger-McKeever Is Ready to Take Up Space at SoHo Playhouse

Playwright and performer Pascale Roger-McKeever will be bringing her one-woman show Fingers and Spoons to the SoHo Playhouse this month. The provocative show, tackling open marriage, will play from Thursday April 25th to Sunday June 2nd.

In it, “a mid-40s mom accepts her husband’s invitation to an open marriage and proceeds with a singleness of purpose no one saw coming. A happily horny journey that deflates, prods, pokes and has fun with the little fallacies we carefully curate to better foster our socially permissible selves.”

I spoke with Roger-McKeever about the show and the process of putting it together.

Can you tell me a bit about your upcoming show?

I would be delighted. It’s about risk taking. It's about showing up for all the challenges that present themselves when you take a risk. It's about taking up more space in the world and learning to have more of a voice in it, or in relationships one on one. It's about going for what you know down deep inside is your truth and letting all the other pieces fall where they fall.

It's not something I ever thought I would write, let alone perform. It represents years of inner and outer work, of things arriving at a certain point in time and taking off from there. As a matter of fact, when I was working on the original 40-minute version I was so scared to perform it that I had to give myself permission not to perform it to be able to do it. That trick of the mind worked; I performed away and got a standing ovation. Austin Pendleton calls it a "roller coaster”!

You've said that the inspiration for this show came from a sexual experience you had. How much did the show deviate from that?

Yes, the inspiration did come from a sexual experience. As for how much the show deviates from that, well, it depends on what you mean by 'deviate' because in a way, it is the sexual experience which launches the story and sex is a pretty powerful thing. Throughout history, humans have died for it or because of it. It triggers big emotions. It is primal, beastly, and yet here we live in a ‘civilized’ world that wants to make it all neat and tidy, make it look a certain way, label it, rein it in (ah, yes, sex is also very threatening), shrink it, yes, our civilized world wants to shrink sex, when sex is the opposite of shrinking. Sex is about expanding, expansion, not just of the limbs, but of the mind and soul. Another thing it's about is control, or rather letting go of control, or rather, you think you're in control but then hello, you are not. I think my show captures a lot of these qualities. And here's the thing, for the protagonist of my play, a 'Mom' in her mid 40s, sex resonates even louder for her, and in her, because she comes from decades of hating her body, literally from when she was a small child, of wanting to change that body, of not feeding it properly, of hurting it, as for her 'privates', forget it, 'disgusting', but suddenly, as a result of this expansion, in a completely unplanned moment, something happens, some may even call it healing... oh, and sex can give you babies, and in this story, Mom loves her 'baby', her preteen son, to death, and also gets to be a sexual being - how cool is that?

What was the process of writing it like?

I never set out to write a play. I set out to write down all the details of a sexual encounter and then, lo and behold, a year later I had a 750-page beast of a manuscript. When an opportunity arose to perform a 40-minute solo show in a solo play festival in San Francisco, I pulled out 25 pages from the manuscript and created a show with it. That piece became a winner of the 2018 March Madness Competition at the famous San Francisco Marsh Theatre. As a winner, I was afforded the opportunity to expand my show and present it again.  In the following nine months I extracted more chapters from my beast manuscript, had weekly meetings with my wonderful LA coach, Nicolette Chaffey and created a new 90-minute version. That show was well received too, but I knew it could be better, and went back to work on it. I paired up with a local director and dramaturg extraordinaire, Andrea Hart, and with her worked on the script some more. Later that year, I connected with the masterful Austin Pendleton and found myself to be his soul sister! More cuts, more edits, and additions, and under his direction, I presented the new work at the 2019 United Solo Festival in New York and was scheduled to tour in 2020 when COVID happened. When the show got picked up again in 2022, starting off with a run in Pittsburgh, then more in performances in regional theatres, which led to new discoveries, more edits, a new scene, and voilà, this is what audiences will experience at SoHo Playhouse beginning April 25th.  So, uh, that's what the process of writing this piece was like, as in, it is a process!

What is the character you're playing in this show like? How much of yourself did you put in her?

You mean several characters in this show, and I play all of them! Well, they're very human, complex layered people, like we all are. But okay, I think you mean, the main character, Mom. Well, Mom is a "devoted, hard working on everything human." Extremely sensitive, she is also strong as an ox, and a survivor of a traumatic past. She's both an old soul and very innocent. She loves her son to death as aforementioned, is a good mom and will always put his needs first. She loves her husband too, and when she accepts his request for an open marriage, it is not just that he gave her an ultimatum, but also that as an artist she will not let convention dictate her future. So, yes, Mom is an artist, meaning she feels deeply and has a big heart. How much of myself did I put in this mom? A lot. But only the parts that serve the story. I am an ever-evolving human, like the rest of us. As for the other characters, same deal: I just put different parts of myself in them, seeking the truth from their point of view. 

You also work as an actor in other things. What's it like for you working in a show you wrote yourself like this versus stepping into a role that someone else created?

In terms of the craft of acting, it's no different: I seek to portray the truth in characters, to act truthfully, moment to moment, in whatever circumstances my characters find themselves in. 

What's coming up next for you after this? Do you have any other projects planned?

I just shot a short film, Little Mother Lies, that the producers are creating for a proof of concept, for a feature. My LA agent is shopping around a screenplay of mine, The Way I Am, and I am working on directing another play I wrote, Family In Church - a dramedy about a Mum, Dad, and their two teenage daughters. We meet this family in a Catholic church on one hot summer day in August. It too is a roller coaster

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!