Review Fix chats with playwright and actress Jennifer Blake who discusses her Mindy McCready bio musical “McCready” to the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June. Breaking down her theatre influences and how her big screen roles (Zealander, Behaving Badly) have played a part in her career on stage, Blake gives us the inside scoop on her process and growth as a performer.
For more on the play, click here.
Review Fix: What inspired this musical?
Jennifer Blake: I was had just finished producing a comedy web series and was bummed out about the experience and really missed singing, and I had a few ideas floating around. I met with a friend of mine and that day, over coffee, MCCREADY was conceived.
Review Fix: How have your experiences on the big screen impacted your theatre work?
Blake: They’re both so different, but at the end they’re both about finding the truth, staying loose, and really going for it. If anything, it’s that on some films I’ve been lucky enough to watch some of my favorite actors right front and center and I just ate up the way some worked. Never half, always 1000 percent.
Review Fix: Who are your theatre influences?
Blake: I grew up being in love with West Side Story, Chorus Line, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls—the big ones. In my little hometown, Montgomery, Alabama, we had the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, so that opened me up to Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, Harold Pinter, Chekov, and on and on.
Review Fix: What’s it like to be a part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival?Â
Blake: I like the feeling that it’s going to be a community of artists, doing their own load ins and load outs, putting up shows in a small mile radius, for a short amount of time.Â
Review Fix: What’s next?Â
Blake: Nashville, the South East, anywhere that will take us and has the shared love of country music and a compelling story.
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