Interview: Deborah Stone of HERE I AM! at The Triad July 21st

The discipline of a dancer is a legend in all show business stories, since the beginning of the industry, and though Deborah Stone has certainly applied that discipline to her career, it has informed all the aspects of her life. A renaissance woman who is always ready to learn something new, explore an adventure, or just live in the moment, Deborah's life has taken her into many corridors, both professionally and personally, and usually because the most prevalent part of her discipline has been her propensity to say "Yes" when the time is right. Whether taking a job in burlesque, touring with the original production of La Cage Aux Folles, or raising her hand when the audience at an acting club is asked, "Who wants to perform tonight?", Deborah Stone is a game girl, ready to play at any moment. I should know, because it was Deborah who enticed me, during some friends' rock concert, to get up from my table and spend a few minutes dancing in a nightclub that had no dance floor. Yes, that lady in the beaded gown is all sophistication and intellect, which is precisely why she can rush into an adventurous situation so readily - because she knows who she is, what she wants, and what it is all about.

Tomorrow night, this cabaret artist who has captured the hearts of her cabaret colleagues and the respect of the industry, returns to the stage in an encore performance of her much-lauded show HERE I AM! and she could not be more excited to be back at work, with musical director John M. Cook by her side. Before that happens, I spent a happy half-hour chatting by phone with one of the most interesting people and most fun dance partners anybody could hope to know.

This interview has been edited for content and space.

Hello, this is Deborah Stone speaking.

Hi, it's Stephen.

Hi.

How are you?!

I'm doing great, sweetheart. How are you?

I'm well, what's going on? How's your life?

How's my life, this is what I have to answer, as soon as I answer the phone? (Laughing) Actually, things are going very well for me. I'm looking forward to my show, I've got it booked in Kansas City for two days next month, in a very nice venue. And I'm going to Greece to have Lina's workshop in September and then going on to Italy to see my sister after that. So I've got some nice things lined up.

So you've literally gone from quarantine to travel.

Well, not right away. It's been a while now.

Why Kansas City?

Well, I'll tell you: briefly my husband Eliot was, many years ago, a curator over at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City (curator of Italian paintings) and with his first wife and his son, he had a life there, and he had friends and two of those friends, a married couple, Mark Sappington and his husband, Dave McGee, they were all excited about me and what I do. They saw the interview I did with Richard Skipper - they showed it to the people over at the American Jazz Museum over in Kansas City, and they said, "Gosh, we'd love to have her come out here and do a show."

How does that feel?

(Laughing) It feels pretty good.

Taking your nightclub act out into the wilds of America...

The American Jazz Museum has this beautiful venue called The Blue Room - it's a very nice room. The first night is a private party, neither night do I have to put people in the seats - it's either a private party or the second night is invited guests and friends. John and I just have to show up and do it, and I'm just really excited about that. And they're paying me, so another wonderful thing! (Laughing)

Imagine, a performer getting paid to do their work.

Imagine, what's that like?

I imagine that there are a lot of lovely performers that don't know what it's like to get paid to do their work.

I think you're right on the money, my dear, no pun intended. (Laughing)

(Laughing) It's a good pun, intended or not. The thing is, and this is a very sweeping generalization, but fortunately, I have a broom with me - the artists always get the short end of the stick.

I'm in a small book club with Richard Skipper and Sue Matsuki and a couple of other friends and the last book that we read was called Real Artists Don't Starve, and it didn't give a lot of how-to's, it gave a lot of how to change your opinion of what it is you do and what you can ask for in order to do it. It really helped our mindsets a great deal, and being a dancer, I was always on the lowest rung of the ladder, anyway... "You mean we get paid for this?"... that sort of thing.

Richard and Sue are two of the most positive-minded people. They're also really good show-business business people, and not all artists are.

I would agree.

How's it going with The Snarks?

The Snarks, the play I did with them was supposed to be aired, then it was lost and she had to re-edit everything, so that's going to happen in September. As soon as I know when it's going to be shown, I will let you and other people know because it was a wonderful thing.

Do The Snarks have a website where people can watch it when the time comes?

No because it's a private club - we rent space from the Amateur Comedy Club, which is the men's acting club - The Snarks have been around since 1909, but we rent this space from them to perform; when we were in the live world, it was only invited. We couldn't charge for tickets, so we can't just invite everybody. It's by invitation only, and everybody gets to invite six people. It won't be plastered all over the place, but it will be available to be seen by invitation, so people that I want to see it, will see it.

It's sort of old world and elegant and sophisticated and glamorous.

Yup! And then there's me! (Laughing)

You're very good at that sort of self-deprecating humor...

(Laughing) I'm just kidding, really.

I mean, we all know that you were a burlesque queen and that you've had to dance with the girls out, (Deborah laughing heartily) but you're quite sophisticated.

I think so.

How did you get started with The Snarks?

You have to be sponsored, similarly to The Lambs, which I'm also in - it was a dear friend and neighbor who's lived in this building for umpteen years, an older gal who's terribly chic and just turned 88 and refuses to act that way. She was a subscriber of The Snarks and a dear friend of hers who had unfortunately died was one of the doyennes of The Snarks. She saw me in a reading - they would do these open summer readings where they would sign up audience members to come up on the stage and read through plays. And I go, "Yeah, sure," I raised my hand cause I like doing that, and she was impressed with me and sponsored me. That meant I had to volunteer to help about three times with lights or props or whatever, and then I was eligible to audition for plays that they were doing. And that's how that happened.

You're pretty adventurous, aren't you?

Yes. It's taken a while, but I've learned that that's the way to be.

Is that how you approached your career in cabaret when it first started - did you just one day decide you wanted to do this and then rushed in?

Yes! Ready or not! And I wasn't always ready but that happens to a lot of us early on.

How many years has it been?

My first show was on January 10th, 2016, so not that long.

Yet, when I started my job at Broadway World, one of the first things that people started saying to me was "Don't miss the Deborah Stone show."

Wow.

Put me in the picture of being so welcomed and embraced by the community.

It feels wonderful. And I worked really hard learning what to do, and especially what not to do, and what to make sure I was focused on before I stepped out on the stage - that's something I learned acting with The Snarks - all it took was for me to go up on my lines during a dress rehearsal with an audience, and not know why I was out on the stage, what my obstacles were, what my why was out there, what I wanted from the other actors. I had no idea why I was there. I might as well have just left. I used to call that "I took a bus to Cleveland in the middle of the show," you know? So I learned from that, that if you don't know why you're going out on the stage before you go out there, you might as well just stay home. I've taken that to heart with my shows: why am I going out there to speak to these people? What do I want to give them? And that's made me focus more deeply.... and, of course, working with Lina has made me focus more deeply.

You've worked with Lina Koutrakos as a director and as a student. Is she different in the classroom than she is in the rehearsal room?

I think she's like the surgeon... she looks at you and watches what you're doing and she sees what it is that needs to be done. She sees where you need to go. I started working with her as a director first and I think of her as a mentor, just because of the way she has directed me. I think of her as a friend as well, and when I do take one of her workshops, I love to watch her work, and I'm not afraid of her. When we first met over coffee to see if we got along, I just felt very comfortable with her right away - I think it's because I'm a woman of a certain age and I've been through certain things and I have stuff to bring to the table, and that's what she likes - so that really worked out well.

And you're going to do her class that goes all the way over to Greece.

Yes! Finally! It was postponed and canceled and we're finally getting over there, at least at this point, we are going

Will the class be different in Greece than it is in New York?

I don't know... her methods will be the same I'm sure, but we will be in a villa on Mykonos, so that's going to be different! (Laughing) We're going to be living together, so it's going to be an immersive experience and this is something I've never done really.

You already worked in burlesque as a topless dancer, will you be a topless sunbather in Greece?

Oh, I've done that already, hon.

(Both laughing)

Because you're an adventurous woman.

Because that's what people did - I was in Greece once and that's what they did, so I just figured I'll just take it off.

European countries have far fewer hangups about breasts than America.

I know, breasts are there. If men can go topless, why not women?

Why indeed.

Well, that's not a problem.

Listening to you talk about The Snarks makes me wonder - you started as a dancer and you did work in musical theater, but as a dancer did you put any focus into your singing and acting training, or was it all about learning on the job?

That's a very good question. Singing was marginal - it took a back seat to my dancing... acting came much, much later. I started to act when I was still living in California because somebody asked me to be in a play, and I had never really had the experience of doing so. So it was cumulatively learned, and dancing was always on the front burner. The singing is something I was always able to do, and I think it's a common experience with people that are able to do things well enough, don't really work on the rest of the stuff. The singing was never primary with me, it was just something I happened to be able to do.

And yet it's what you do now, primarily.

Yeah. That's life - I like that.

Do you enjoy the fact of evolution in your life?

Oh, god, yes. One of my early shows was called Exactly Where I Belong... and then of course there was Still Exactly Where I Belong - this is when I felt I had to do a new show every five months. A brief story about my transmutation or morphing into a singer was that when I moved back here to New York, early on in 2002, I was not ready to be a singer. I wasn't good enough. And I was too old to be hired as a dancer, so I was in limbo. I would go to a singing call and I didn't have what it took - I just didn't. So I didn't know what to do. I started studying voice classically and I started to get a technique back again and then I started to sing other things which led me to the material I do now. And oddly enough, when I revisit my art songs and my classical pieces, I'm able to sing them better, since this music opened my voice up and relaxed it, and the support is there. My teacher was right - I was tense and I was not breathing enough, the support wasn't there. So I'm relieved that I'm doing it as a singer because I can't be a dancer anymore. I'm not going to be hired as a dancer. So I'm happy that I have this gift of this talent that I can work with, now.

Do you still go to class?

No. I do my own stuff, my own workout at home.

But you continue to use the dancer's body...

Oh, yeah.

...because once that kind of discipline is in you, it never leaves.

Yeah. An idea for a show I was going to do was called "Once A Dancer." Once you're a dancer, it's always in your body and you can't just let it all go, you just can't.

The shows you do are always personally informed, where does that come from?

Where does that come from? That's what I know.

There are performers who don't lean into their personal life, they opt for comedy shows or composer tributes or maybe a show about Paris. You don't do the theme show thing, the theme is always Deborah.

Well, not yet! It just hasn't happened - I think this is what I needed to do... and having Lina step in and be a director, that's what she started to dig into right away: "Tell me about you, Okay, this would work. And how about this song? And this is an interesting part of your life." So that sort of evolved that way, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be all about Deb. And there's a fine line between doing a good show about yourself and also being very self-indulgent, and that's a line I don't want to cross.

Do you feel like you've come close to getting cringy at any time?

No. I don't think I have because I don't allow myself to, even in life. It bothers me no end when I or anybody else does that. (Laughing)

What would you say to people who think a cabaret show should be more about the artist singing songs for the entertainment of the audience and less about their personal histories?

I believe the first job of anybody stepping onto a stage is to draw the audience in and give them something, make them look at themselves, make them feel your experiences, you're supposed to make them cry or make them laugh. It's all about entertaining them. So I understand that standpoint. I don't think it's the black and white situation though; everybody has a story. Some are more interesting than others, but they're more fascinating than we realize until we start to tell them. You'll say, "Oh, I did this, that and the other," and there's going to be one person going, "Really? You did that? That's amazing," but to you, that's just your life. So when you come to put a show together, it will be investing in your life: if you're doing a show about Paris, it's not going to be just songs from Paris, it's going to be how they affected you, and why did you select this song? It's got to hit something in you to want to do those songs.

How did you know that it was time for you to go out onto the cabaret stage and tell your story?

I finally was able to sing. I'm able to sing and put a song across in a way that was happily accepted by an audience, be it at The Lambs or open mic or whatever. It was mostly at The Lambs - that's where that happened. I thought, "Oh, I'm pretty good at this, maybe I should just do it." That's where it was.

And now five years later, here you are.

(Laughing) Here I am!

Which is exactly the name of this show that you're doing, which I saw and loved down at Pangea, pre-pandemic.

I remember meeting you at the bar, you had your little hoodie over your head, and I didn't know who you were and you were so sweet.

I always wear my hoodie. It's how I keep my little naked head warm in air-conditioned rooms.

It was very cute.

I remember being surprised because the photo for the show looked like you were presenting yourself, next to the words Here I Am! But it is in fact the name of one of the songs in the show.

Yes, I end with it.

I loved that number when I heard you sing it - what compelled you to make that song the title of your show?

I don't know that I wanted to, I think it happened the other way around. I wanted to do a show - I was intent on establishing myself and making myself known to people, and I wanted them to see me. Did I ever tell you how I found that song? I went to Google and I searched songs about here I am, and I literally found that song that way. I changed a few of the lyrics to make it work for me, and I said this really works for this show for the ending. That's how I did it. I wanted something to put a button on it, so to speak.

You didn't just manifest that, you made it happen.

I guess you could say that.

Has the pandemic experience led you to change anything in the show?

I just took one song out and maybe I've changed one thing that I say. I've taken it as its own entity and presented it again. The only thing that's changed is me. When you revisit songs, or whatever it is you're doing, you're not the same person you were a year ago. So you are feeling it in a different way. You're putting it across with a different depth of meaning. So, literally, other than taking one song out and saying one line slightly differently, I'm not adjusting it, not adding patter about the pandemic, I've taken it as its own entity and I am presenting it through me now, as opposed to back then.

What is the recipe for your remarkable self-awareness?

Recipe? Not to do a play on words but I'm not aware of any remarkable self-awareness. I don't know.

The thing is, and for full transparency for the readers, you and I have gotten to know each other a little.

A little, yeah. I love to dance with you.

We got to cut a rug at a Clearly Now concert at The Cutting Room, and I'm looking forward to getting back onto a real-life dance floor with you again...

Yeah!

... right after I drop my COVID weight and can actually dance again.

Oh, god, tell me about it.

It would be a great way to lose the weight.

We could! We could! Something to look forward to.

So, we've gotten to know each other a little and I see you as someone who is always aware of who you are and when you're growing, and it's a rare gift that I don't see in everybody.

Really? Thank you. That's interesting to hear. I'd like to think that it's because I'm a well-rounded individual, I've had a very varied life. A little sidebar here: I was totally immersed in the dance world for so long, and then I have caught up with people years and years and years later, who never got out of that and have been in the dance bubble this whole time. And they seem to me rather stunted as people because they've never gotten out. I've gotten out and worked for a living, I've gotten out and had all kinds of jobs in all kinds of places. I've sung, I've been on stage dancing topless and I've done other things... and also I'm older than a lot of them. I think I'm just more well-rounded, so I have a better perception, and I've been through some serious stuff as far as loss, and illness in the family, and divorce, and things like that - that all adds fodder to the fire if you will. So maybe that's what it is. I've had a varied life, and if you don't learn from that, you're just gonna keep hitting your head against the same wall.

Now, to be clear, we are not going to run any pictures of you performing topless with this article.

(Laughing) No, no, no...

Do you think that your propensity for continuing to learn comes from the dance training that was so strenuous?

Yeah, but I'll tell you something. I drop in on a class if they need somebody to sub in because somebody is not there. I don't take classes on a regular basis - it's something that I don't like to do. My way of working is going and learning, and taking the tools, and running with the tools - taking a class and benefiting from it and then going and doing something with it. When I took Lina's class, it was cause she said, "Come, we have a space, you can drop in and sing." And I learned a great deal, but I don't do it on a regular basis. I don't want to get stuck going to class all the time.

You just sort of assimilate here, assimilate there, and then take it and put it together.

I know it's valuable, but I know far too many people, that's all they do is go to class. And I'm not a very patient person - it's not a good thing but I'm not a patient person. I just say, "Okay, tell me what to do," and I'll go do it. (Laughing)

I know some actors who say "I'm an actor," but then they don't audition and they don't go to class.

Oh, I'm sorry, then you're not an actor. If you're not doing it, you're not doing it. That's what I think.

Here I Am! is playing The Triad on July 21st - it's a glitzy room with a proscenium arch, it almost looks like a burlesque room. How's your state of mind?

I'm very excited, I've never done a solo show there - it felt good to be there, we were just rehearsing in the space. And I think it's the perfect size theater for me. I'm pulling out all the stops: it's going to be multi-tracked, six cameras, videoed, the whole nine yards.

That sounds like fun and I'm so excited for you. It's a wonderful show and I hope lots of people come - thank you so much for the chat and have a wonderful time at The Triad.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to it, honey. We'll talk again soon.

I'll see you on the dance floor real soon.

Yeah!

Deborah Stone HERE I AM! Plays The Triad on July 21st. For information and tickets visit The Triad website HERE.

Visit the Deborah Stone website HERE.

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