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About Ann
Writer/Performer Ann Randolph is known across the country for her outrageous
physical comedy, inspired monologues, hilarious characters, and poignant
storytelling.
She was born and raised in Ohio. She began her career by writing
an original comedy for the patients at the Athens State Mental Hospital.
After college, Randolph found herself living all over the country-Alaska,
Boston, NYC, Santa Fe, and finally Los Angeles. She has appeared in countless
shows.
Here’s a partial list:
Solo shows
Squeeze Box —
Winner of LA Weekly “Best Solo Show for 2002” and
the Los Angeles Times Ovation Award for “Best Solo Show 2002”
Ann
Randolph Miss America —
Nominated for “best solo show
of 2000” by the LA Weekly: “Randolph ‘s coterie
of American women is a bold, coarse, and consistently entertaining romp… wickedly
subverted. Randolph is an innovative and gifted performed.”
“Randolph is reminiscent of a more intense and provocative Gilda
Radner. She writes from a place that few of us have been and dared us
not to laugh. Definitely not a show to be missed.”
Ohio —
headlined the Los Angeles Women’s theater Festival
and the NYC Word Fire Festival. LA Weekly Pick of the Week:
“Randolph takes us on a dizzying tour of her life — hilarious accounts
of sexual fantasies and painfully funny portraits of redneck relatives. Randolph
does for the trailer park trash of Ohio what Garrison Keillor did for
the tight-lipped Nordics of Lake Woebegone, allowing us to see ourselvelves in
and among people who seem utterly removed from our urban existence.”
Sketch Shows
Groundlings —
Unsafe Sketch — “Outstanding New Comedy
Group” — Hollywood
Reporter.
“Ms. Randolph is beyond exceptional and her comic superiority is the driving
force behind every scene in which she participates.” — Backstage
West
Also:
Cross Your Legs, Comedy Clinic, Angry Tuxedo, Vegarama
Theater
Eight Ways to meet Your Neighbor —
“Winner of Best Comedy Ensemble” — LA Weekly
Randolph nominated “Best Comedy Female Performance” — LA
Weekly
“All the performances require considerable comic syncotpation,
but the Rubber Faced Randolph is particularly fine as an outrageous doomsayer
who courts catastrophe and spreads misery with missionary zeal.” — LA
Times
Bob’s Office Party — Randolph created her roles in a script
by Rob Elk and Joe Keys
“And in a pair of wickedly hysterical roles, Ann Randolph steals the show.” — LA
Times
Betsy Loves Snap Beans
by Connie Ray
“Randolph takes the audience through the South on a screaminly funny trip.
Her characters are flawless.” — The New Mexican
Hair — European Tour
Getting Out — Santa Fe Actors Theater
Waiting for Godot
Crimes of the Heart
TV
California Connected/PBS — wrote and performed two comedic film
essays on social issues.
Two Guys and a Girl — guest star
Drew Carey Show — guest star
Ohio — co-wrote the television pilot
Klasky Csupo — created original series, “Girls Room” for
the creators of Duckman and Rugrats
And countless commercials.
Film
Reservations — written, directed and starring Randolph.
Received “Best of the Fest” in annual PXL This Festival 2003.
"In Reservations, Randolph exploits the pixilated intimacy of the close-up
to hilarious effect. Looking into the camera is if it were an imaginary
lunch date, Randolph sips from a glass of wine and runs through an outlandishly
colorful monologue on the joys and indignities of oral gratifications." — LA
Weekly
Remote — Guest Starred
Lucky Luke — Guest Starred |
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Interview with Ann
Excerpts from an onstage interview with Ann Randolph
following a performance
of Squeeze Box
Santa Monica Playhouse, Winter 2004
Henry Goldberg, Reporter, Santa Monica Mirror
 Did you really live at a mental asylum?
Yes, I lived at the Athens State Mental Hospital for three years while
working my way through college. The hospital gave me free room and board
in exchange for taking chronic schizophrenics on road trips and also writing
and staging plays with them. I loved the patients — most of them
had been living on locked wards most of their lives and they loved to go
out. I also took them to plays that I had written or was in at the college.
I remember playing a role in which my character looks into an imaginary
mirror and says, “How do I look?” and one of the patients,
an old guy with a wad of tobacco in his mouth hollered back from the audience, “You
look pretty good, Annie.”
What did you do after college?
 For graduation, my parents gave me a one-way ticket to Alaska. I read
in the back of a magazine that you could make $20,000 sliming fish, and
my game plan was to make that money and move to New York. Plus, the thought
of spending the summer hiking through the lush coastal forests was irresistible.
This was a huge adventure for me because I was leaving Ohio for the first
time. So I got to Alaska and lived in a little pup tent on the cannery
spit for four months. My job was pulling off the blood balls on the sides
of the pink salmon as they came down the conveyor belt, or as we called
it “the slime line.” I sucked — I always ended up pulling
the whole fish apart and the blood balls were always squirting in my eyes.
It was gross, but I was into it until I got hypothermia.
And then the Exxon Valdez crashed, and I got a job making $2,000 a week
cleaning oily rocks. I stood in crude oil up to my knees and cleaned oily
rocks with cheerleader pom-poms from 6am to 9pm seven days a week for three
months. After three months, Exxon picked a winter crew and I was lucky
to get on it. I lied and told them I knew how to drive a skiff and was
hired. I spent the next nine months out at sea on a small research vessel
with fourteen men with eighth-grade educations. I was the only woman, and
we only made it to port once a month. No phones, no mail — only twenty-four
hours of porno films shown in the galley. It was very difficult at first,
but by the end we were all friends and I had written my first solo show.
With the money I saved, I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico and built an outdoor
stage in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was there that I staged my
first solo show. Thanks to Exxon!
You’ve lived in a lot of strange places. Have you ever had a place
of your own?
 No. In fact, I think I should call my next show Free Room and Board. I
always knew that if I had to spend money on rent, I wouldn’t have
money to produce my own shows, so I always looked for opportunities for
free rent. Like in New York — I knew after I saved the money in Alaska
that I didn’t want to blow it on rent, so I put an ad in the New
York Times classifieds saying, “Alaskan Bush Women seeks free room
in exchange for tutoring in the arts and/or companionship.” Well,
let me tell you, I got a lot of freaks calling me, but I did find a legitimate
one. He was a 90-year-old Jewish Orthodox man who lived on Central Park
West, and he had just lost his wife. His daughter responded to my ad, and
she had me move into his apartment and keep him company in the morning,
just until the maid came. It was an unbelievable apartment. My bedroom
overlooked Central Park, and all I had to do was just sit at the breakfast
table with him while he ate his gefilte fish. He called me “the kook,” I
think because I used to play banjo in the subway with a red wig on (that’s
when I started getting desperate for money).
How did Squeeze Box come to be?
Well, I had just plain lost faith. Bottom line. I had been living in Los
Angeles for ten years and all I wanted was to be making my living from
my art and it just wasn’t happening. I was working from 7pm to 7am
Monday through Thursday at a homeless shelter for mentally ill women in
Santa Monica. I had taken this job because I loved working with the mentally
ill and I could sleep on this little cot after the women had gone to bed.
Since I was able to get some sleep, I would have my days free to write
and audition. My starting pay was something like $7.80 an hour. Everybody
I worked with had at least one other job besides the shelter and it was
very difficult to witness my co-workers struggle as much as the homeless
women. So I just started writing to try to make sense of it all.
Are you still at the shelter?
No. I said goodbye to the women last July after working ten years on the
graveyard shift.
I was able to leave because Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft,
and Robert F.X.Sillerman gave me a check for the movie and stage rights
to Squeeze Box, and for the
first time in my life I was able to focus entirely on writing and performing.
Up to this point, I had made no money on my shows because I was self-producing
and I sucked as a producer. I could only afford to rent a theater once a
week, so I could never afford a legitimate run. And my home phone line
was the box
office reservation number. Even though I’d have packed houses, I ended
up letting most of the audience in for free — remember most of my friends
worked at the shelter.
Did you train in acting or writing?
 Yes, with the Groundlings. When I first got to Los Angeles, my sole goal
was to get on Saturday Night Live, and I heard the best way to get seen
for SNL was through the Groundlings. I auditioned and went through their
required classes and made it into the Sunday Company. During that time,
the Sunday Company had twelve cast members, including Will Ferrell, Cheri
Oteri, and Chris Kattan. Our shows were hilarious, but I felt early on
that I wanted to say much more. When I’d start to write a monologue
for the show, it would be twenty minutes instead of the required two minutes,
and I knew then that I had to quit. And over the next six years, I wrote
four solo shows.
An odd thing is that although I never trained formally as a writer or
actor, I got lots of jobs teaching playwrighting and acting. In Alaska,
I taught playwriting and humanities at the local community college. I also
spent some time as an artist-in-residence in New York City and at the Cambridge
Multicultural Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most recently, I’ve
really liked teaching solo and storytelling workshops to all kinds of folks.
What artists inspire you?
 Friends, mostly who are musicians. Let’s see — Suzy Williams,
Bill Burnett, Nick Ariondo, and all the great musicians from the Sweet
Chariot Music Festival. Comics like Drew Hastings and Maria Bamford and
Two Headed Dog.. Google them — they’re great!
And composers — Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Copeland, Debussy, Piazzola,
Bjork, Jane Siberry, Pat Metheny, Ennio Morricone, Alanis Morrisette, the
Carter Family, Radiohead, Brad Meldau, Spearhead.
And filmmakers like Luis Bunuel, Les Blank, and, of course, Mel Brooks.
And the writings of Wendell Berry, Rumi, and Emerson. And most recently,
George Saunders. And so many more — just give me a sec.
The previous interview was conducted in 2004. It is now
the Fall of 2006, Can you tell us what has happened in
your career.
So many wonderful things have happened. The show opened
Off-Broadway in the summer of 2004 and ran for 6 months.
Squeeze Box received fantastic reviews and has been touring
throughout the US and Europe.
Lifetime Television has bought the rights
to Squeeze Box and I'm currently writing the screenplay which will be
called, "Gimme
Shelter." The movie will feature many other actors and actresses
and will not be a filmed version of the show. I think I'll probably play
either
Julie or Brandy in the movie. We'll see!
Do you have any new theatrical works coming up?
Yes, I'm always showcasing new pieces and just won the
first ever Moth Slam in LA with a new piece on deception.
If you're a solo performer and not familiar with the Moth
please check out their website, themoth.org . It's a wonderful
place to try out new work. I also won the Manhattan Monologue
Slam and will be competing in the National Slam on Dec.
4 at the Bowery Arts Club in NYC. Once again, this a great
place for solo artists to try out new work. Their website
is http://www.mmslam.com/.
I've also been taking my homeless characters, Kitty Kitty
Meow and Carol to the streets doing social satire on Venice
Blvd and Oceanwalk. This a great fun. I'm able to dialogue
with many folks on the social issues facing our community-
primarily homelessness, living wage, and housing- all done
in a very funny theatrically engaging way.
And radio continues to be a great medium for telling stories.
I've written and performed several pieces for Public Radio
International's Weekend America and plan to do more in
the coming year. One of the pieces they aired features
my parents in a painfully funny story about death and going
home. It stars my parents and is part of a larger documentary
that I've been shooting over the course of 3 years on my
fears of what like will be like without them. Sounds like
a box office smash! Any investors?
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