Interview: Jackie Dempsey on Squonk's BROUHAHA

Jackie Dempsey is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Squonk. The Pittsburgh-based theatrical performance group has played everywhere from Broadway to the Kennedy Center, and now they're bringing their playful, collaborative energy to North Carolina on August 23rd and 24th. They’ll be performing at the Lazy Daze Arts and Crafts Festival in Cary. Known for its whimsical, high-energy music performances, they’ll be presenting BROUHAHA. I had the great pleasure of speaking to her about this and more.

To start things off, would you mind telling us about Squonk?

JD: Squonk is a Pittsburgh based performance troop where we create all of our work from scratch. We build large scale spectacles. We've been doing mostly outdoor work for the past decade or so. We've toured all over the U.S. and we've been overseas to Europe and Asia. We've been to Kenny Center, Lincoln Center. One of our theater shows did a run in New York, both Off-Broadway and on Broadway. We've been all over the place for about 33 years now. My partner, Steve O'Hern, and I are the artistic directors, but we collaborate with our team of artists and musicians and tech crew and designers. So it's a very collaborative process to make the work that we do. 

How did you go about creating this performance group?

JD: Well, we were much smaller when we first started. Steve and I met through some mutual friends. He came from a design background and had just finished grad school at Carnegie Mellon in Theater and Set Design. I had just finished graduate school out in St. Louis at Washington University in music composition, theory, and performance. I saw a performance that Steve had done, and I was really fascinated by the visuals in the show. They were really like nothing I had seen before. But I thought maybe they could use a little more music in the performance. So I offered up my services and we started working together and we just had maybe four people, then grew to five, then six all musicians, one tech person. We started traveling in a van. There were six of us then across the country playing at festivals and in bars and nightclubs. We finally got our first theatrical commission in 1995. It was at City Theater here in Pittsburgh to create Night of the Living Dead: The Opera, based on the cult horror film that was actually made not far from Pittsburgh, just about an hour or so away. So that was our first big theatrical commission where we had a real scene shop and there was a crew there, and we had a director and a dramaturg and a Costume Designer. That kind of helped set us off on our theatrical journey. We started touring all over the place.

How excited are you to be coming to North Carolina?

JD: We've been to North Carolina many times. We've never been to Cary, so we're excited about that. We were just in Raleigh for Art Explosion last year, and I think that was maybe our third time at Arts Closure, I'm not sure. We've been to Wilmington several times. We've been to NC State in Raleigh. I think we've been to Charlotte. For Pittsburghers, we spend an awful lot of time in North Carolina. We love it down there. The audiences are fantastic. We always have a great time, so it should be fun. Let's just hope it's not too hot. 

What can you tell us about the show you’ll be presenting titled Brouhaha?

JD: So this is a show we created just a couple years ago. It's our latest show. The big moment, the highlight in the show, is when the audience gets to come up and play what we call the Squonk Accordion, which is a series of large bellows that the audience can come up and pull a rope to make them open and close like this. They make a sound sort of like a foghorn. They're all different tones. Everybody plays along with the band and everyone can come up such as the little kids, parents, and grandparents. Everybody can come up and participate. That's the big moment in the show. They're all, there are the things that happen. We have dancing tuba bells and scissor lifts that the tech crew manipulates. There's choreography to them that goes with the music. For the finale, we built about 30 feet tall  banners. Then there are eyes and ears and smoke shoots outta the ears. That's the big finish.

Of all the places where Squonk has performed before, do you have any particular favorites?

JD: There are a couple cities we've been to many times that I always love to go back to. Providence, Rhode Island, Baltimore, Maryland, and El Paso, Texas are some of my favorites. When we've been overseas,it's always a fascinating experience. We performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival many years ago, so we were in Scotland for a month. That was an incredible experience to be in a city that was just bustling with all sorts of performance. There was also a film festival and a book festival. So that was a really exciting time. I think when we went to South Korea, we've been there a couple of times. It was fascinating to learn about their culture and people there were just so friendly and excited to have us there. That was a really wonderful experience.

You guys have previously played at the Kennedy Center. Most recently, Donald Trump has very controversially taken over that organization, which left a number of people (including fired employees) very frustrated. Many events, including the Hamilton tour, canceled performances as a result. What are your thoughts on that?

JD: I mean, the Kennedy Center has an amazing history, and I'm really proud that we were able to perform there and be a part of that. It's a good thing we did it before this happened because I doubt we would be the kind of thing that would be there to his taste. I think it's a real shame. I don't know that the president needs to be that involved in the arts. He has plenty of other things he could be worrying about than taking over the Kennedy Center. I'm impressed with all the people who have canceled their performances. That must be hard because that's all their people, all their employees counting on them. But they took a stand and I certainly admire that.

Going back to the beginning, how did you first get started in the theatre?

JD: I don't have a history in the theater. I just have a history of music. Steve, his history is with visual art and design, and he is also a musician. So one of the things that maybe sets us apart a little bit, because we create theatrical performances, but we don't have any theatrical training. We take the abstract forms of music and art and bring them together to create something theatrical. We do have a wonderful director in Rick Campo, who’s from London, but based in Pittsburgh. Luckily for us, he has an incredible history with theatrical performance. So he does guide us in many of our shows as we're creating them. He's been working with us for over 20 years, but I mean, I started in music. My older sister played the piano and I thought, “I wanna do that too.” So I started playing piano, took lessons from when I was a little girl, then off to college and graduate school. So I never thought I would do something like Squonk. I often thought I would play in a band, but I didn't imagine that I would be in a group that does this kind of multimedia theatrical performance. But I'm so glad that I met Steve all those years ago and really changed the trajectory of my life.

For those who’d like to pursue a career in the performing arts, where do you think would be a good place to start?

JD: Whatever it is that you're passionate about, you need to practice it every day. Whether you're an artist or an actor or a musician, you just have to put in the time and you have to be dedicated. I'll say I used to teach at the University of Pittsburgh where I got my bachelor's degree and I taught piano there. Many students would ask me, “should I be studying music?. My parents think maybe I should be studying something more practical.” I would just always tell them that “you never know what's gonna happen in your life. You never know if you're gonna get a job, even if you're studying to be a nurse or a dentist or a doctor, whatever it is.” So you may as well do something that you're really passionate about that you can really give it your all. If it doesn't work out, you can always figure out something to do. But I always feel like you should, you should give it a good try. It takes a lot of dedication. If you really want a lot of money, probably going into the arts is not the best career for you.

Before we go, do you have any other upcoming projects that you’d like to share with us?

JD: We're actually just starting on a new show this summer. So we'll be premiering the next work about a year from now, probably next June here in Pittsburgh. So we're really excited about that. It's kind of top secret right now, so I don't think I'll give you any details on it, but Steve is working on the model. We're just starting to get ideas for the design. The one thing I will say is that we'll have more audience participation than we've ever had. So it's gonna have probably, I think, maybe four different scenes. So about half the show, the audience will be able to participate and at some point they'll even get to come up onto the stage. So we're excited about exploring those possibilities.

Jackie, I thank you very much for devoting your time to this interview. For those who’d like to learn more about Squonk, where can people find it on the internet?

JD: Our website is just squonk.org. We also have Facebook and Instagram, it's at Squonk Official. You can also find all of our music on Spotify and Apple Music and all those places, both under Squonk

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