THE FRIDAY FIVE: Joy Tilley Perryman, y'all

Oh, that wacky and wily Joy Tilley Perryman...she's one of Nashville's favorite comedic actors and tonight she assays another Del Shores role as she opens Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? for ACT 1 at the Darkhorse Theater. Because of that, she has our Friday Five spotlight focused squarely on her while she teases her hair high to heaven and creates food props that'll make you want to slap your mama!

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five features five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. We'd love to give you all sorts of information about how to score tickets to Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will?, but since no one bothered to send us a press release, we can only suggest you go to www.ACT1Online.com and try there.

This much we know: Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? plays Darkhorse Theatre, 4610 Charlotte Pike in Nashville, January 16-31. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. for evening performances and there may be some Sunday matinees that start at 2:30 p.m. You're just gonna have to find out for yourself. We have a hankering for some funeral grief buffet food...fried chicken, any kind of casserole you can name and a pecan pie, please. Then we'll go see the show. See you there.

Here's Joy, giving us some answers to our regular questions:

My first live onstage taste of theatre was a Birmingham Children's Theatre touring production of Rumplestiltskin was I was around seven. I was so mesmerized by everything happening around me and onstage that I refused to get up from my seat when it was over. I gripped the armrests with my tiny little determined hands and it took my Daddy and the teacher to wrangle me from my seat and carry me, crying uncontrollably from the theatre. Truly, one of my best performances. I was hooked from that day forward.

My favorite pre-show ritual is having my unsweetened iced tea in the dressing room while I dish about the goings-on with my dressing room mates. I am not an actor that has to have peace and solitude and what-not in order to prepare. I do always say a little prayer while I'm in the wings awaiting my first entrance. And if I'm working at Chaffin's Barn, then pre-show you can bet I'm eating some pickled okra off the salad bar.

My most memorable "the show must go on" moment is probably the show after we buried my Papaw. (now, don't get all weepy, this is a happy story). My Granddaddy, Gartrell Thompson was a no-nonsense, hard-working, barber shop-owning, WWII vet. He was in his 90s when he died. I was doing a show in the backstage at Chaffin's Barn and had been home to Alabama for Christmas. Papaw passed right before New Year's Eve and was buried on the 31st. That is a huge night at the Barn and also closing night for the Christmas shows. I, of course, went home for the funeral and I was making plans to have my role covered that night, but my Dad told me that Papaw would not have wanted that, he would want me to go finish the job I had been hired to do. So that is what I did, and we had a great show and I felt very proud that the show did go on and that just maybe some of Papaw's work ethic had rubbed off on me. Sometimes, you have to just pack up all those feels in an "old kit bag" and just soldier on. As a point of fact, the two times Papaw and Meemaw visited the Barn they were always in the buffet when I would try to visit their table but they told my parents they could never find anything to eat there!

My dream role? That's a tough one. I don't think it is written yet, I am very enamored lately by Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (look her up), maybe somebody can turn her life into a play. I would like to play Truvy in Steel Magnolias before I have to play Ouiser. I am the Susan Lucci of that show. I have auditioned no fewer than six times for that show and have never been cast. Oh, yeah I would also like to play Lenny in Crimes of the Heart. Maybe this wasn't such a tough question after all.

My theatrical crush? Elaine Stritch, of course. Is that weird? I mean I want to be her, maybe that's not a crush. OK, my crush? Living, Raul Esparza. Dead, Edward Herrmann and Jerry Orbach. I just made this question very weird didn't I?

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