Tamarie Cooper's LIVE IN-PERSON Sticky Sweet Summer Show! Comes to Midtown Arts & Theatre Center Houston

Tamarie and her gang of merry misfits are returning to the stage-an actual stage-for a hilarious, irreverent, all-new musical extravaganza featuring an original score played by a live band and performances from some of Houston's funniest, wildest, quirkiest, sometimes raunchiest actors.

The Sticky Sweet Summer Show! explores, ponders, spoofs, laments, and celebrates all that it means to be alive in 2022. And what a time to be alive it is. Highlights include feral actors, dancing egg rolls, Tamarie's 6th grade disco dance-off nemesis Charlotte Lloyd, a sassy chair, and your racist step-uncle Roy. A Houston summer tradition returns, sticky, sweet, and ready to rumble!

Tamarie says, "After sitting on my couch for two years straight it is exhilarating to be shaking my tailfeather in public again, to be tap dancing, belting out showtunes, and returning to the general ass-clownery that is The Tamarie Cooper Show. Fortunately, I have a wonderful team of artists, writers, composers, musicians, and designers who are also on this wild romp. Almost equally important, I have a good chiropractor!"

Tamarie needs a good chiropractor. She has been sitting on her couch for two years straight and she is getting ready to dance her ass off for you and it is a big ass and she is not young. She is getting older almost every day. In fact...

This year she is celebrating her 25th all-original musical, co-written by Patrick Reynolds and featuring crowd-favorite co-star Kyle Sturdivant and a company of TCS veterans and newcomers. What she used to call "a one-woman show with a cast of thousands," The Tamarie Cooper Show has, for years, been a cult hit and can't-miss Houston summer tradition.

Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Tamarie Cooper

Book by Patrick Reynolds

Music composed by Miriam Daly, Erin Rodgers, and Alli Villines.

Lyrics by Tamarie Cooper & Patrick Reynolds

Music direction: Alli Villines

Band: Brett Needham, Erin Rodgers, Kirk Suddreath

Set Design by Ryan McGettigan, Lighting design by Hudson Davis, Sound design by Shawn St. John, Costume design by Tamarie Cooper & Juan Sacaray, Properties design by Lauren Davis, Video design by Tim Thomson

Cast: Ronnie Blaine, Dillon Dewitt, John Dunn, Sara Jo Dunstan, Bryan Kaplún, Jenna Morris, RaMina Anderson, Julia Oppenheim, Angela Pinina, Kyle Sturdivant, Abraham Zeus Zapata, Walt Zipprian and of course, Tamarie Cooper!

In 1996 Tamarie put together a performance that was part monologue about her storied dating life, part dance concert, and part fashion show and performed it for two nights on the tiny stage at The Orange Show. Country rock band Horseshoe played on the roof and Tamarie cooked her famous caponata pasta sauce and fed her entire audience. Jason Nodler, her co-founder at Catastrophic's predecessor company Infernal Bridegroom Productions, was in the audience for the first Tamalalia! and asked if she'd consider creating a sort of sequel for IBP. According to Nodler, "Perhaps the smartest idea I've ever had was to co-opt Tamarie's brilliant idea."

Tamalalia 2: The Field Trip! was performed for two weeks aboard a moving school bus. The runway for the fashion show was the aisle of the bus and, in place of pasta, Tamarie fed her audience sack lunches. They toured underground and folk art spots and along the way performances broke out all along the route. To this day "I was on the bus!" is the proud refrain of those that were lucky enough to score one of the coveted seats.

The Tamalalia series was an overnight sensation and Stages Repertory Theatre hosted Tamalalia 3: The Cocktail Party, a full run of the first in a series of full-scale, original summer musicals.

Fast forward to 2022 and Tamarie is celebrating her 25th(!!!) all-original musical, with a book by Patrick Reynolds as it has been for many years now, and featuring her immensely popular co-star Kyle Sturdivant, a company of TCS veterans and newcomers, and (as always) a live band.

It is The Catastrophic Theatre's Christmas Carol, its "all-school musical," its summer camp for grownups. There has never been anything like it in Houston and there never will be again. If you've seen a Tamarie Cooper Show you're unlikely ever to have missed another one and if you haven't this anniversary is the perfect opportunity to hop on board.

Tamarie Cooper's LIVE IN-PERSON Sticky Sweet Summer Show runs July 1-August 6, 2022, at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH). Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at matchouston.org or by calling the MATCH box office at 713-521-4533. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets to all performances are Pay-What-You-Can. Not recommended for children under 13.

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