Interview: Tamarie Cooper & Kyle Sturdivant of ANOTHER DING DANG TAMARIE SHOW

The unsinkable Tamarie Cooper has been churning out her summer musicals for over 28 years, and this June is no different, a totally new show for you to see. Another Ding Dang Tamarie Show opens up at the MATCH, June 27th and runs through August 2nd. This show is a Houston summer tradition, and it is the Catastrophic Theatre's version of A Christmas Carol at the Alley or The Nutcracker at the Houston Ballet. Except every year, this one's a new script and a new ball of crazy to enjoy. Broadway World writer Brett Cullum got to sit down with Tamarie Cooper and her “partner in crime,” and assistant director Kyle Sturdivant, to talk all things Tamarie! 

Brett Cullum: Here we go. So, first up, what is the plot or the theme of Another Ding Dang Tamarie Show? Your productions always kind of have this little through-line or theme going on.

Tamarie Cooper: As I've said before, the plots of my shows are not a heavy lift. There is something more of a revue feeling to my shows. Vaudevillian, a mixture of comedy sketches with insane musical numbers, but I always pick some underlying theme. Sometimes they're insanely broad, like love. And then other times, it's more specific. Last year was Texas. This year? 

Oh, and the other thing, I should say, interrupting myself and starting over, is that there's always this pressure around this time of year to come up with what I'm doing the next year. We're in rehearsals, and everyone's like, “Well, what's next?” And of course, we have to announce our season, so I've got to write a blurb. I got to get stuff out there, and I think I was in the hallway at the MATCH, and I was like, “Oh, gosh! Just another ding dang Tamarie show!” That’s where the title came from, me just shouting down a hall in a moment of sheer frustration. But then I started to think about it, and it does touch on that I have to keep coming up with different ideas every year. And so this time, we went loosely into my creative process. So that gets displayed in the show. And then also why do I keep doing these ding dang Tamarie shows? What is it that brings me out there every year? Why do I put myself through this? Why do I have to come up with this? Is it just my own sick, narcissistic love of the audience? 

Kyle Sturdivant: [audibly gags]

Brett Cullum: Oh, gosh!

Kyle Sturdivant: Sorry, I had something in my throat.

Tamarie Cooper: [pretending nothing has happened] Or is it something beyond that? And so those questions are sort of the theme throughout it, like looking at the creative process involved. And then just what exactly is my reason for being out there and doing these shows year after year after year after year? So you'll have to come see it to find out the answers. 

Brett Cullum: Something I almost never do, I did some math this morning, and currently, you have written more musicals than Stephen Sondheim. That is crazy when I think about it.

Kyle Sturdivant: Bravo! Brava! Cooper!

Tamarie Cooper: Yes. Well, too bad he couldn't have stuck around a little longer, and perhaps reached my total. But as I always say, I cannot take the credit for these extravaganzas without acknowledging so many people who make them happen, because it isn't just me by any means. The spark comes from me and general themes, and you know, obviously, directing, choreography, and costuming. But I have people who help write them. I have my book writer, Patrick Reynolds, who lives in New Mexico, actually. And thanks to technology, we're able to Zoom and talk on the phone, and share Google Docs. So we can be working in real time on editing together. He likes to yell at me a lot and complain, and then I tell him he's funny, and he keeps working for me. So that's good, and then people like Kyle, who has been my partner in crime, as you said, for many, many, many years. Kyle, how many of these shows have you done? Do you know?

Kyle Sturdivant: I think about 27, something like that. All of them! All but 4.

Tamarie Cooper: Yeah, yeah, he's done a lot of them. So it would be like 24 shows that you've done then. He wasn't here when I first started doing them. He came back to Houston in 1999, and without having really known him, I threw him into one of the shows, and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And then he debuted and promptly took one year off to go to Southern Decadence. We've acknowledged this in our friendship, where other people who are longtime veterans of the show will say, “I am not going to do the show this summer. You know this is the summer I'm taking my children to Disney World,” or you know, “I have a huge family reunion, and I just can't do it.” And I'm like, “Oh, okay, well, it's okay. I'll get you back next year." And then to put a strain on our relationship, Kyle's always felt like he doesn't really have that choice, which I think in therapy was actually realized many years ago. So I have given him some freedom. But most of the time, he knows I'm just so desperate to have the help, and that the audiences also think of it as the Tamarie Cooper show starring Kyle Sturdivant, so luckily, he hasn't completely rebelled yet, and left me hanging in the lurch.

Kyle Sturdivant: Well, you know, it's just been part of half my life now. So it's the kind of thing that you can't get away from that you love very much, even though at times it's completely grates on your physical and mental health. But you know, when I moved to New York in 1998, I was gonna try to do the acting thing there, and failed miserably, hated New York, and moved back within nine months, and I had some friends who were in Tamarie’s show. They were like, “Well, once you come back to Houston, we'll make Tamarie put you in this show!” I was like, “Thanks!” I had seen her shows, and I loved them. And so I was like, Yeah, and I came back. And my first rehearsal is with Madam Cooper, with a cast on her leg, with a cane, and she goes, “Today, we will be rehearsing the drag number 'I Will Survive’, and you are on the Sherpa Mountains in Switzerland! And I was like, “Perfect!!! Hey, this is for me!” Over the years, we've developed not only a close friendship, but I think a close professional relationship where we just have ways of communicating with each other, and bringing mostly the best in each other. Who could ever just say no to doing that, even though I've tried a couple of times?

Tamarie Cooper: We've been in so many productions together, not just the Tamarie shows, but so many other shows with Infernal Bridegroom Productions, our former company, and now, of course, with Catastrophic, and we've both directed each other in big, meaty, juicy roles. We've been part of what we call “the brain trust of Catastrophic!” We're working with Jason, where we work on the casting and developing seasons as well, so there's a shared language, for sure. There's a shorthand between us, and I find it invaluable in my shows to have him there, because there are definitely times when I'm on stage and some numbers he's not in, and he can really help me. Be my eyes out there, too, for just things that I can't possibly really see. Kyle's a great director. He'll just come in with like one sentence that is so spot on, and exactly what the actor needs to hear. So again, that is very valuable to me to have him in the room for that. And we have that thing that Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman had. We always kind of joke with each other.

Brett Cullum: It's so funny because you have this electric charisma, it's unique to both of you. And when you're on stage together, it's just like it amps up.

Tamarie Cooper: Sometimes it gets set up for it. Last year, when he was playing … oh, God!... Kyle was playing the Confederate flag! Yeah, super awful, you know. But someone had to! 

Brett Cullum: Typecasting all over the place.

Tamarie Cooper: You know, I set it up, and I knew, going into that every night, that I have no idea what he is going to do! There are moments when he did get me. He always, I think, there's always some moment where it's a challenge for Kyle to try to break me on stage, and so usually he does succeed during the run several times, and people love that the same way we loved it in the Carol Burnett show. They do love to see those moments where we just can't keep a straight face and keep going.

Brett Cullum: I always joke that it's the Indy 500, and the audience is there for the wrecks. They are absolutely waiting for somebody to go up against that wall. It’s live theater! 

Kyle Sturdivant: I love it. I mean, we're not trying to fool anybody here with these particular shows. We're not recreating the wheel. It is a kind of dig, dig, wink, wink, nudge, nudge type of theater where we're there to have a good time, and let's all realize we're all in the same room to have fun and laugh and if you get some story out of it, that's great. But it is really about coming together and just having a good time with the audience, with each other. And I think that's really what appeals to everyone, and the fact that most people on stage, you see, are not traditional musical theater actors and actresses. It's a wide range of people and bodies, shapes and ages, and theater styles, and it makes it even wackier. 

Tamarie Cooper: I always say it's more interesting to see someone who's a real person like right there, and the intimacy of doing that kind of broad vaudevillian performance, but so close in that space at the MATCH, I think, also makes it special where you don't have that removal and that slickness that you'll see in like, obviously a big, highfalutin musical production. And then I think the accessibility comes into play because a lot of the stories that end up being made into sketches and musical numbers are things that people can relate to over the years, whether it was going all the way back to things like my parade of ex-boyfriends. And I, you know, have people come up after the show and be like, “How did you know that I dated all the same guys?” You know, there will always be something like that that I think they can relate to. This year, there is a trip to the Catastrophic Theatre storage unit and and I think again, even if everyone doesn't have a storage unit full of theatrical debris, everybody has some attic or storage unit or closet, or something that they just can't control, right? That is just festering and multiplying and breeding and creating its own little monster. And so that again, everyone can relate to that.

Brett Cullum: I am very seen right now. I feel very seen. I feel like you've been to my storage unit. There is a lot there! So, how do you decide this cast every year? Please say it's a cult, because it feels like a cult.

Tamarie Cooper: It kinda is, I guess. We always say it's summer camp for grown-ups, right? So it's like, “Are you coming back to camp this year. Are you coming back to camp?” People come and go. You know, there are people who move off to other cities, or just have different opportunities or conflicts, and so we won't necessarily see them every year. 

Brett Cullum: It really feels like a family, and I believe that is part of what truly sells this show every single year! You all have this closeness! But do you have some set tropes? Do you have some things that HAVE to be in every show? 

Tamarie Cooper: Well, there's a thing now. We call it “the Abe Ism.”  Abe Zapata has a moment where he tells a joke. I'm usually the only person on stage who has to suffer through this moment, and these jokes are filthy, really, very, very lewd and hilarious. And we don't know what he's going to say; he does not actually run them past me. I just give him this moment, much to the thrill, groans, and horror of various audience members. That is something that we always seem to find a place to put in there. 

I also feel like there's always a moment of just genuine sentimental emotional feeling that comes. Usually it's towards the end of the play. But there's a moment where maybe our theme has kind of wrapped itself up again, and I just have a moment with the audience. I've had some moments where my voice breaks as I'm talking. In 2022, when we got to do the show again after the pandemic, and just having a moment in the finale where I was like. “You don't know how much this means to us to be back here with you!” That was certainly an emotional moment. 

Kyle Sturdivant: And last year, when we celebrated Houston, the good and the bad. That felt really nice, leaving the theater, going, “Yeah, we live in a great place!” And of course, we always talk about Tamarie’s big behind.

Tamarie Cooper: Food seems to be present. I don't intentionally put it in there, but there's a lot of food in my shows. Next year is going to be another greatest hits show. Every 10 years, I stop, and I do a reflection where I pull out a handful of numbers from the last 10 years of shows, and tie them together with some ridiculous through line, and I'm starting to think about the numbers. And I was like, “Oh, that's got food in it! That's got food in it! That's got food in it, too!”

Brett Cullum: No, you should just make it all food. That'll be it. This will be great. You can call it the “ALL YOU CAN EAT TAMARIE BUFFET!” Hand out plates and plastic forks at the top, and start serving people! Why do you two not have a podcast? Something where, weekly, we can get a dose of this wild chemistry that you have! 

Kyle Sturdivant: We always wanted to do a podcast. But I think it's just laziness. I don't know.

Brett Cullum: Oh, you can write and produce an entire musical every year for going on 30 years, I think you can handle a podcast. Well, of course, you can see Another Ding Dang Tamarie Show at the MATCH starting June 27th, and it runs through August 2nd. I always say it's not summer without a Tamarie Cooper musical in Houston! It really is an institution and something I look forward to every year. We will see you in the theater this summer. 

Tamarie Cooper: Yes.