Interview: Tim Connell of LUCKY ME at Pangea March 17th & 20th

Tim Connell's cabaret act DREAMIN' AGAIN was one of the most popular shows to play the 2021 cabaret season, with new shows being added to accommodate the demand of growing ticket sales. This post-quarantine return to the stage showed Connell in an exceptional light as a singer, as a storyteller, and as a respected member of the cabaret community of New York City. Finally concluding a successful run of the show in February, Connell decided to turn around and jump right back into the performance waters with LUCKY ME, a St. Patrick's Day show informed by his own Irish heritage and the ever-present ties to his family. Set to premiere his new act on March 17th, Connell is deeply ensconced in rehearsals with his longtime partners Steven Petrillo and James Followell but, as his opening night approaches, Tim took a brief half hour out to chat with Broadway World about theater education, show chic, and what is and isn't going to be on his dinner table on St. Patrick's Day.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

Tim Connell, welcome to Broadway world.

Thank you. And thank you for inviting me in, literally.

It is my absolute pleasure. I want to start out by talking about your last show...

Yes.

When you did that cabaret, I heard somebody say that it was your first show back in a while.

Yeah. I would say this was my first show back on a stage in a while because we did a live stream version of (my) previous show for a theater, and then we did do something live, but at a socially-distanced dynamic, in a retirement community in Philadelphia. So I would assume it meant the first time live back on a New York stage.

How long had it been since you'd played in a New York nightclub?

November 2019 is when I played The Triad with the first iteration of Shades of Romance. And the live stream version was Shades of Romance 2.0, so when we came to Pangea last November, the idea was to do a Shades of Romance 3.0 so, as creative processes go, it shifted to what it was.

When you start to create a new club act, what's your jumping-off place?

I come from a master's program where I did applied theater, and in their program we learned the idea of devising, creating theater. My approach has been in that vein where - whether it's an idea or a song and whether it's James (Followell), my musical director, or Steven (Petrillo), my director - we come up with an idea and go from there. Specifically, with the show Dreamin' Again, it really came out of the intention of "If we're going to invite reviewers into the room, best to show them what we already have in our coffers, and how to present ourselves in the best way possible." And that way it's like anything in the theater - you revisit something and you bring a deeper experience of living to that material. So, all of a sudden, some of the material we've done before, we found new ways, or I found new ways of finding it for myself... and then we added some new elements. So I would say my way of creating is like my way of cooking. And I'm embarrassed to say that sometimes it's just everything in the pot and all the ingredients will show up when they need to show up.

Are you a good cook?

I would love to be a good cook; in all honesty, I lack the patience to do it.

But you don't lack the patience to put together a nightclub act.

No, because that's a space where I feel like I can slow down and just be in the room. And there's something different about that that suits my temperament that, on some level, I'm in the driver's seat, where I can take my time, and on another level, I'm there with people just to hang out. That platform of cabaret has really spoken to me from that place of just wanting to be with the people. Granted, I might be the focus, but at the same time, we're creating an experience.

You have a background in theater.

Yeah.

At what point in the trajectory of your performance journey did you say, "I think I want to stop saying people's lines and start telling my own story"?

It wasn't necessarily a shift; it was an inclusion of. I think the more I became settled into who I was as a person and as an artist (it) gave me the courage to step out solo and let my voice be heard. By doing that, I can go back and say other people's lines or do other roles, where I'm able to experience my own authorship and bring that uniqueness to whatever I'm being told to do - so it sort of feeds off each other. It's just another expression or another branch in my tree of being a performing artist.

Back in 2014, when my parents were living in this retirement community (this is before they passed), and they had a big performing arts center. Through my father, I connected with the person there that does the entertainment, and they asked me to come down and do a show. I feel like that was the beginning - this is where it started.

And where does the teaching come into your tapestry?

Again - it's another branch. Teaching is just another extension that is another version of performing solo, but it's a different idea of performing solo: people are looking at you. I'm trying to make it a dialogue in the classroom, even though I might be teaching, and there's something around teaching, the past four or five years of working at Alvin Ailey, that I've found my knowledge more ingrained in how I can be as a performer. When you're given the opportunity to teach, it becomes an opportunity to reinforce what works for you, then you go back into whatever you're doing - whether it's performing on a cabaret stage or on a (theatrical) stage - and you embody it without work. It just is there.

But you have a very extensive resume in teaching - it's not just at Ailey that you teach.

That came out of the applied theater program that I went to for my master's. I was on the road with Spamalot for three years and, as one would do, you save up a chunk of money. And the option was, "Do I make a purchase, or do I want to go back and get my master's?" and that had always been something that I'd been curious about. So I chose master's, and I didn't recognize it at the time - it wasn't until I started going out there and doing teaching artists' work, working with various communities, that I began to feel what I learned. I've worked with the LGBTQ community, where we did a cross-generational theater project for two years. I worked with elders doing theater, and all of this only reinforces what has always been there: my excitement about what it is to be an artist and doing theater. And when you watch individuals who are not professional and they commit to it, you see, "Oh, their commitment is as simple as what it is." How can I, as a trained professional, take that same (commitment) and do it without judging it, going in. Teaching only gives me confidence to be in the room as a performer as well. It really does feed off of each other.

Let's pivot and talk about your upcoming show. The advertising is very clear: this is a Saint Patrick's themed show. What made you decide to go ahead with a new show so soon after finishing Still Dreamin'?

A friend of mine from way back in the early performing days, he and his partner (at the time) opened up a brand new cabaret space right outside of Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, called Dino's Backstage; they made a cabaret room. So when I first stepped out on the cabaret stage here in New York, they came up and saw my show, and invited me to come down there because that's where I'm from. I did a couple of shows and then they invited me to come back during St. Patty's day, so that's the birth of the show. It's new only to New York because we haven't done it on the professional stage in New York. It's anchored in two stories about my ancestors and sort of building around that. I didn't anticipate it to be such a joyful experience, but it has really turned out to be something I look forward to doing. So we've done it before - it's new to the New York audiences because it hasn't been done here. So it's already in my bones, so to speak.

So you're just freshening it up, dusting it off.

Yeah. And you revisit something and you bring a deeper (experience)... I guarantee the experience of the past cabaret show is definitely going to have an impact on what I'm going to do in the room this time. (I know that) you do transcendental meditation: to me, one of my ways of actively meditating is revisiting something as a performer and finding deeper presence in it. That, in turn, has a different conversation or experience with the audience. That's what excites me about doing the Irish show. And on top of that, we have a violinist - I love the violin; in and of itself, it just moves me - that and the cello. So I love that added element.

I can tell, listening to you talk, you have a very clear picture of who you are as a person, as an artist. When you put together a club act, what kind of relationship do you have with your director? As a man who really knows his aesthetic, how pliable are you?

Steven (Petrillo) and I, we've known each other as performers, and we've trained with some of the same acting musical theater people. So, we come from a same base of language and, while he has a different version of a taste, our same intent is of "simple is best" - what is it to strip it down to just the words and the music, and the person and those kinds of ideals. So any conflict (if that's the right word to use) is me having to step out of the way and trust that the objective eye has some point of view that's valid, and me learning to understand how to challenge it or hold my ground with what I want to do. This last iteration of the show Dreamin' Again was a perfect example of me taking the driver's seat in a way that I had not done before, and not being afraid of doing that. There's something really attractive about a calm, no apology, "This is what I'm going to do, and people are going to like it or not like it, but this is what I'm going to do" (mentality) and being okay with it,

I couldn't help but notice, while doing my research, that you have a very particular style of fashion. Chic, natty, yet comfortable, professorial. How did you come to develop that style that you dress in to perform?

I think it really is another layer of what I am attracted to when I go to a cabaret room or a more intimate space of performing, in that it literally is as if I've just invited people into my living room; we're just going to hang out and I'm going to be sort of the focus. It's just about how to hang with each other. I recognize that there are moments where one must dress up and do their thing, and I totally respect that. I am of the mind of how to be dressed down but have a little edge. I'm here. I'm just here. I embrace that "hanging out" experience. Also, coming from the seventies,... that folk cafe-coffee-guitar thing, I'm more drawn to. I feel too performative when I dress up to the point where I don't feel relaxed at it.

You are very relaxed during your shows. How do you achieve that? I've seen some people who go out on stage and they're just so terrified.

I want to say that my age has allowed me to sort of relax. My work on myself has allowed me to relax and to translate that into my work as a performer. It doesn't mean that I don't have a (percolating inside of me) neurosis as I'm up on the stage. I'm able to identify but not let it detract me or deter me. If it does, I'll call myself out on it and bring myself back. The idea of forgiving yourself and just showing up is enough. You start from there. It's like a yoga practice. I've done the work. I've trusted it. I'm just going to step on the stage and let's see where it goes. I like that.

You are a teacher by trade and you've mentioned a couple times the work that you've done on yourself: what is the greatest life lesson that you would impart to people around you?

Have patience with yourself. That was the one thing my dad would... I would resist growing up, and I finally understood when I was out in the world: patience is paramount. If people can identify their own sense of space and patience, the possibility of who they can be fully is so much more prescient.

What's your favorite thing to eat and drink on St. Patrick's day?

I'm going to be honest with you. I'll bring up my Irish brogue in this moment here. (Tim does, and it's a good brogue.) Personally, I'm not a fan of the cabbage and corned beef, whatever that stuff is. I'm not a beer drinker, I'm a teetotaller, I drink more fruity drinks. So when I celebrate St. Patrick's Day, I would be more appreciative of a potato or two, but not the corned beef. My mother, and this is one of the things I point to in the show, she was the one that just - like a little kid! - embraced the Irishness of herself. It showed through the whole year when she was alive, and every St Patty's day, it was better than Christmas. She did all she could to make sure that we all remembered we're Irish.

It's good to have pride in your heritage.

Ooooh!! That's what I actually have embraced, doing the show. There's a line in the show that I say, "I used to think that the Irish were a pint and potato culture." However, what I recognize is, underneath that are people who know how to spin a tale and sprinkle it with just the right amount of weighted pathos. And I cannot tell you how I feel my own Irishness bubbling to the surface in so many different ways. I definitely see my mother in me, in terms of how I am sometimes - it definitely is influenced by her - she loved being Irish. And, quite frankly, my dad (who was a quiet one) had his own version of Irish storytelling that showed up unexpectedly, but it was really my mother who led the way. In classic mother fashion of a family of eleven, she was dying and she knew she was going to die right before Christmas, so she put together this Christmas package for the family that she wanted to make sure that everyone had. Every year prior to that, she would always make a calendar and mark everybody's name, birthdays and anniversaries. And there would always be some cover art, but this last one she wrote a poem - it was so Irish, so mother, and so on point in terms of who she was, her sentimentality and love of words that has somehow filtered through me. And it just reminds me of the writer John O'Donohue.

Tim, are the Irish lucky?

I would say they are lucky in that they have an incredible sense of humor, themselves. They know how to laugh at themselves and, in turn, laugh at the dark and the light, and that's luck that keeps 'em going. Their laughter, their humor, their love language and what it does.

I'm really grateful to you for talking with Broadway World today.

I am very grateful for you, Stephen.

"The Bench"

It is a quiet place,

This space of mine.

Serene and peaceful

And the light Divine.

Friendly shadows fall

From the old Chestnut trees.

The silence is soothing

As it rides the breeze.

Close your eyes and breathe.

It's you and it's me.

Come sit on the Bench

And let us just be.

--- Claire (Wilson) Connell

Tim Connell LUCKY ME plays Pangea on March 17th at 7 pm and March 20th at 2 pm. For information and tickets visit the Pangea website HERE.

Tim Connell has a website HERE.

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