INTERVIEW: ‘Lone Star’ returns, with The Chalks bringing the music
Photo: The Chalks are part of the revival of Lone Star, a comedy by James McLure. Photo courtesy of Greg Mooney / Provided by Glenna Freedman with permission.
The Chalks are a tongue-in-cheek country music band featuring Mary Brienza, Kathryn Markey and Leenya Rideout. They have played many New York stages, and now they have returned as the house band during James McLure’s comedy Lone Star, now playing the 13th Street Repertory Theatre.
Lone Star, starring Matt de Rogatis and directed by Joe John Battista, takes place in a Texas roadhouse saloon in 1972, when two brothers strike up a conversation about the one brother’s tour of duty in Vietnam.
“I think it will be a more immersive experience for the audience,” Markey said in a recent phone interview. “They’ll have some music. They’ll have some interaction with us, which will have a different feel than watching a play, and it hopefully will put them in a frame of mind where they can really enter that world of these guys in Texas in ’72.”
The Chalks are all about the comedy. Markey and Brienza, two accomplished theater stars, gathered with a group of women a number of years ago, and they were tasked with creating a night of comedy.
“After this handful of women sort of fell away, three of us remained,” Brienza said. “We were creating an evening of sketch comedy, and … we were looking for the way to present this song. And Kathryn said, ‘I think that we should be famous.’ So we created this beautiful group, the Chalks, these country music superstars, sisters by birth and superstars by divine right.”
They started playing together, and audiences started to respond to their musical antics. Now they have performed in comedy rooms and music rooms, and keep writing songs and developing the entire world of the Chalks.
“And really people loved them and wanted us to continue being the Chalks off-stage as well,” Brienza continued. “They’d talk to us after shows, and they really wanted to stay with these characters. … And we just kept developing the project, and we’ve done a lot of really wonderful, fun and exciting different projects as the Chalks.”
When portraying the Chalks, Brienza said the singers live in a somewhat alter-ego universe, similar to the musicians in Spinal Tap. Brienza plays Judeen Chalk, the older sister by nine months in the group, while Markey is the younger sister, Judelle Chalk.
“We’ve been doing this together so long, but even from the first moment we had such a deep history,” Markey said. “We figured it out right away. We had been playing music since we were itty bitty kids. We were nine months apart in age. We borrowed from all the great folks and archetypes of country music. … We reference the Judds, the Mandrell Sisters, all the great country artists of the early era.”
Markey added: “It’s very clear to us what the Chalk perspective is on anything. We often do a lot of political material, and we often do social commentary as pop culture. We can just talk about anything. We can solve your problems. We can help you out. We can give advice, and we play a lot of music.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Chalks perform in Lone Star at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre. The band will appear during the first week of performances, while only Rideout will perform during the second week of performances. Click here for more information and tickets.
