Interview: Jaston Williams of HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS at Stateside At The Paramount

Jaston Williams is best known as the co-creator and co-star of the beloved GREATER TUNA series of plays, including GREATER TUNA, A TUNA CHRISTMAS, RED, WHITE, AND TUNA, and TUNA DOES VEGAS. These two-person productions captivated audiences across the U.S. for more than three decades, with performances on and off Broadway and at prestigious venues like the Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, The Alley Theatre in Houston, Pasadena Playhouse, and The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. The Tuna plays have also appeared internationally, including at the American Spoleto Festival, the Edinburgh Festival as an official U.S. entry, and in two command performances at the White House. Williams also adapted GREATER TUNA for an HBO special produced by Norman Lear.

As a playwright and actor, Williams’ work spans from avant-garde productions of Eugène Ionesco to the joy of musical theater. His contributions to the arts have been widely recognized, including the national Marquee Award for Outstanding Contribution to Historical Theatres. He is a seven-time Helen Hayes Award nominee and has received accolades such as the L.A. Drama-Logue Award, the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Award, the Texas Governor’s Award for Contribution to the Arts, and the Texas Medal of Arts. A proud alumnus of Texas Tech University, he has also been honored with its Outstanding Alumnus Award and regularly serves as a guest lecturer on playwriting.

In his post-Tuna career, Williams has written and performed a range of solo shows that mix humor, adventure, and personal history. These performances explore everything from his father’s breakdown on the night the Beatles debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show to narrowly escaping armed kidnappers on a Guatemalan volcano, and even impersonating Michelangelo at a 1970s Renaissance fair hosted by Dennis Hopper—all while wearing a chicken suit. His life and work are anything but dull.

Jaston Williams resides in Lockhart, Texas, near Austin, with his husband, Kevin, and their son, Song.

I was thrilled to spend some time brightening up a cloudy morning by chatting with the wonderful Jaston Williams.

BWW: I'm just super grateful to be with you, Jaston. I have been a fan of your work, and I'm not going to say since I was a kid… but you've been around a while. You've been doing this a while.

WILLIAMS: I have lived this long. How the hell did that happen?

BWW: I think the last thing I saw you in was your turn as Scrooge at ZACH. What a great show! What a great performance there! Jaston, I’m just so grateful for the contributions you have made to our local and the Texas theater scene.

WILLIAMS: I’m glad I was offered that role. You know, there are so many productions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. It’s done everywhere, from bowling alleys to, you know, the Ford's Theater. But to be offered that role, at that time in my life to play that role was a gift from Dave (Steakley) and from ZACH, and I really appreciate it.

BWW: So, HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS? What inspired you to create the show? What do you hope we take away from it?

WILLIAMS: Well, I haven’t been on stage for a while. I've been working on writing and other things, family, you know, and aging and arthritis and all of that, and I just wanted to get back on stage. I don't know how many shows I've got left in me as being on stage. You know, we you reach a certain age, and you have to realize… Well, you know. I think back to 400 years ago when I would jump up on that table and hang from the antlers. I can't do that anymore, but I can do other things. It makes me seek out my other talents.

So I just hadn't done anything for a while, and I missed the audience, and Jim Ritz at the Stateside has been such a good and loyal friend. He always, always offers me a space when I want. So, that was it.

BWW: In HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS, we get to hear about your life in the theater and all that stuff. Is there a particular experience that stands out as a defining moment? As you look back on this with the wisdom of the ages, as it were…?

WILLIAMS: Lots of people ask how I met Joe Sears, and we were doing Shakespeare. Before we did Tuna, Joe and I did Shakespeare and Chekhov and Pinter, and comedies and classics, and that's how I met Joe. Joe was in a production of MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM, in which I played Puck and Joe was Francis Flute and Thisbe. He did the play within a play.

You know I've seen so many guys take on Thisbe, you know, and it just turns into a drag show. I'm not knocking drag shows, I'll make that clear. The best theater in the world has been in drag shows, but all Joe needed was a long stem rose and a scarf. And watching him, you thought this guy is a comic genius. I watched his performance every night. I would climb up in the rafters with Oberon, who was one of the five craziest people I've ever known in my life, and we would watch Joe every night. We could not get enough of watching him do Shakespeare, and he was a master at it. The friendship came after that. So MIDSUMMER was a turning point.

And another Shakespeare show that was a turning point was the first professional production I was ever in at First Repertory company in San Antonio. It was a production of Hamlet. It was a life changer, one of the life-changing experiences that I talk about in my show.

Somebody who wasn't sure what they were doing booked two rival schools for a 9am performance of HAMLET, and they were Hispanic schools. They were Chicano schools, and this was back in the seventies. It was a life-changing experience. They made us work. They're like, “We’re not here to praise you. We're here for you to impress us. And it was a mind-bending experience. I'd never known anything like it. It was like performing for the Groundlings, you know. The Old Globe. By the end of the performance, we were imitating the experience of our audience. We realized, you know, that this, the kind of gravitas that is in Shakespeare's plays, especially HAMLET, is something that these kids lived with every day. It was one of my favorite performances. It took me over the top, and it affected me for years, and my attitude about race and my affection for Mexican American culture, and it was funny as hell. When Gertrude was raising the glass, you know the poison cup to salute Hamlet, the women in the audience are going, “Don't do it, put it down!” Life affirming experience. So I have a whole section in the show that's called Hamlet Con Queso. The give and take with that audience was truly something else.

In that production the actor playing Horatio was Hispanic. He was a brilliant actor. He became good friends later with Pacino, and was in a lot of Pacino's films, but he was a direct descendant of the General Santa Ana, whose forces had killed the heroes of the Alamo about five blocks away. We kept a lid on that.

BWW: Can you tell us how the humor and the themes of your work on GREATER TUNA resonate with over the decades? How has it resonated with folks?

WILLIAMS: You know, we always said we would have someone in our audience wearing overalls next to someone in an evening gown. We wrote this satire. We were satirizing issues. We were satirizing book banning and word banning, and all of that. At the same time, we tried to show that there was a lot of affection that we had for the people that we'd grown up with. To me bad satire is cruel. It’s pointing out the obvious, and it's promoting a crueler world. Good satire is pointing out maybe weakness. But also, it's expressing humanity.

Joe was a genius at that with Bertha. When we did GREATER TUNA, you find all this stuff out about Bertha, that she's a good mother, that she's just trying to get one child to eat one bite of food, that she's doing everything the way she was supposed to. You become totally endeared to her. And then you find out that she's banning books and plays and words, and all of that. We had some people that showed up for our shows that didn't get the satire. You know they were somewhat in agreement with Bertha and that's a little unnerving. But at the same time you don't stop trying to reach people.

We talk about GREATER TUNA, and we were taking on the moral majority. There's a great irony. Now they're all in Congress. You can't make this stuff up. Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about the Gazpacho.

Police. Really, you know you can't. It's really hard to be a satirist these days. It's very hard because you can't come up with anything that's more ridiculous than what you see every day. You know, as the old boy in Lubbock could say, “it's just ignorant with a capital E.”

BWW: Seems a way we bridge these divides is to invest in our own “Berthas.” You learn about who she is before you learn about what she's doing. I think when we're able to do that, it really does make it harder to otherize people.

WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

BWW: You're doing noble work.

Jaston: You know when I did one of my solo shows some years ago, and this woman came to see it in Austin, and she had driven about 60 miles to see it, she was a Tuna fan, and that's what she was expecting. And she came up to me after the show, and she said, “I didn't realize until tonight that I was homophobic.” “Did not realize till tonight that I'm homophobic,” and she comes to see my shows. She lives closer to Galveston than Austin, so she'll be in Galveston when I perform HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS there. I thought, now that means a lot. When you can get on stage and define yourself, not in the way that other people wish to define you, so that they can garner hate and votes, and whatever. But define yourself as you are. Some people will believe their eyes and their ears.

BWW: On that note, you've performed here and there and everywhere, from the White House to Galveston, as it were. How has being in Texas and Austin influenced your work and your storytelling?

WILLIAMS: Well, Austin was bound to be it for me, even though I don't live there anymore. But I live close enough. I can be downtown in 45 min from my front door. Austin always made sense. There was a mentality here. I remember Austin in the seventies, you know. They said it was barefoot and unlocked doors, which today doesn't make me that comfortable. But no, Austin always spoke to me.

For one thing, they had trees, and I'd grown up in a world without trees. We were suspicious of trees and you know people could hide behind them. But no! Austin had a mentality and a freedom.

I remember one time arriving in Austin around Christmas. I'd been in San Francisco, and things had not gone as planned, which quite often would happen in San Francisco. And I came back to Austin. I was hitchhiking into town. I was heading to a friend's house, and we were stopped at a light on South Lamar and smoking a joint, of course, and the people in the car next to us rolled their window down and we passed it over. And I thought, “Yeah, this this place is going to work.”

Writing GREATER TUNA we knew who our audience was in Austin. I was naive about the audience outside of Austin. I thought, this thing will run for six months, and then we're going to have to get serious. And it ran for three and a half decades. But yeah, Austin is good for my heart.

BWW: What do you think makes GREATER TUNA so relatable?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think you know so many people have that aunt, or that cousin, or that twin brother. You know the people that in the North put on the back porch and in the south we put on the front porch.

When we were going to New York off Broadway with GREATER TUNA, it all happened in such a rush. The whole thing happened almost exactly a year from inception to making it off Broadway. I kept thinking, this is a dream. We're going to wake up and have to go get a job at Jack in the Box.

Joe had an aunt or a cousin that lived in Dumas, Texas, who read The New Yorker and New York Magazine and all of it, and she told Joe, “Joe, when you get to New York, look out for John Simon. He's a barracuda.” When word is out on John Simon, in Dumas, Texas word is out. Yeah.

BWW: How was working with Norman Lear on GREATER TUNA?

WILLIAMS: It was really quite wonderful. It was an honor to work with Norman Lear. It was a whole New Medium for us. There was a lot of work that needed to get done there. I think frankly, the product scared the hell out of a lot of people in America. You know, two guys playing women and playing them realistically, and taking on the moral majority. You know a lot of that. The moral majority crowd in South Carolina, they all have cable. But I think the one thing that we discovered was as much fun as we had, and we did have a ball doing it, but we preferred doing it live. The thing about live theater. It doesn't matter how good you were in the matinee. You've got to come back in and do it again. I think of theater actors as athletes. You can't look it up. You can't find it on cable. Theatre is a personal experience, and that's so much of what I love about it.

Someone will come up and say. “I was there the night of the blizzard in New York.” There were 80 people in the audience who just were not going to go home and watch it snow. And that performance, the assistant stage manager had a shovel, and she was shoveling the alley because I had to run down the alley to make costume changes, had to literally run outside and enter through the lobby of the theater. Sue Sampliner, who is now General Manager for WICKED, and has been for years, is out there with a shovel, clearing a path for me. The people in that audience felt so special. We don't care how deep the snow is. We made it, you know.

I remember once, and I lived downtown at the time in Austin, and I was walking to some restaurant or something, and a guy came up to me on the street and said. “Mr. Williams, my mother died at your show the other night,” and I said, “Oh, my God!” He said, “Oh, no, she was happy. She laughed all night long, and then she went out in the lobby and had a heart attack. It was a great last night.” I thought, “Oh, my God, you know, but life, life goes on.” You know you made someone's last moments a really good time. That counts for something. Yeah.

BWW: You have won numerous awards including the Texas Medal of Arts, do you have any that have been most meaningful to you?

WILLIAMS: I think the thing that was most meaningful was when we were chosen [as one of the] best plays on Broadway the year we took TUNA CHRISTMAS. That meant a lot to me, because it placed us with our colleagues. Some of these plays were obscure, and these plays were everything from us to Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was great to be in that company, and it meant a lot to me, because it was about writing, and the writing is very, very important for me.

BWW: Yeah, writing! It’s one of those things you can continue to do now as you look at what's next for you.

WILLIAMS: That's why I'm in Lubbock right now. Joe and I have written the book along with Alan Robertson doing the music for what was going to be a children's musical. And then we wrote the first song, and I called Joe, and I said, “This is no longer a children's musical.”

Texas Tech is going to mount it, and I'm here to watch the callback auditions. I did a workshop with it last summer. Allen's music is mind bending, as always. It's just been a love fest. So, you know, Joe and I got together and we're still at it.

BWW: What would you like us to take away from HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS? Anything you want to say about the show?

WILLIAMS: I titled it initially HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS because that was kind of my life for 35 years. I am the grandson of a genuine cowboy. My grandfather was a genuine, the real thing. My father, when he was 11 years old, rode a pony on a cattle drive from the Texas Panhandle to Albuquerque. As I say in the show, “If you grow up with cowboys in the family and don't benefit theatrically. Then you're not paying attention.”

Also, I was always a free-spirit, you know. I was a small kid, I was too small to play football. You know there was all of that, and so I sought out what I could do, and it was much the same with Joe. Joe was that unusual boy that was very funny. He could make any sound in the universe. I always said he's part parrot. He could imitate anything.

One reason I wrote this play, and I deal with it in the play, is that Joe and I both come from interracial families. Joe has a Hispanic granddaughter that he helped raise and did a real good job of it. My husband and I adopted a boy from China and we know what it's like. We know what racism is, and that point needs to be made along with all the others.

The other important thing about this show now, and I will always make my points, you know, philosophically, is we need a laugh right now. We don't need to ignore the situation, but we do need to laugh, and if that's the gift I've been given, then I'm going to get out there and try to make people laugh.

BWW: And we are all better for it. Jaston, we are grateful for your gifts. There is joy in the world, and you help bring it. I'm looking forward to the show. It's just a couple of performances right now. Correct?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, we're doing two shows on Saturday, and then I'm going to Galveston next weekend, and we're doing two shows on a Saturday there.

BWW: Anything else you want to let us know?

JASTON: It's just so amazing the life I've had. You know, I remember my father. And I remember being so worried about my father the first time he saw GREATER TUNA, and I thought, “Well, you know, he's an old cowboy, and you're up there in a dress,” and he came backstage, and I said, “What'd you think, Daddy? And he said you should have put that dress on 10 years ago!”

And we’re all so glad Jaston Williams did. Are you even as remotely excited as me to spend some time with Mr. Williams? He’ll share more with us about his storied life in HIGH HEELS AND COWBOY BOOTS at Stateside at the Paramount. The show runs for only two performances on February 1st. Shows are at 2pm and 7:30pm.

Catch Jaston Williams’ hilarious new show

HIGH HEELS & COWBOY BOOTS

February 1, 2025

Sat at 2 pm & 7:30 p.m.

Stateside at the Paramount

719 Congress Ave.

Austin, TX 78701

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