P2

MRS. NURDIGER

J: Who was the first 'character' you developed for performance?

R: Back in college my drag name was Drucilla Emeraude. All my friends called me "Dru". Our gay group occasionally would do drag shows at one of the bars in town to raise money for various things and I'd do lip synched songs for tips. I didn't actually become a total character and sing live for anything until DeAundra Peek was born in 1987, and that was mainly due to the fact that DeAundra was never expected to sing on key, ever! I am really good at singing off key.

J: Who and/or what influenced this?

R: DeAundra Peek was the first of my current character cadre, coming about because I'd been a guest just as myself on "The American Music Show" for some years, talking about my artwork and crazy antics around town. I'd idolized a group of girls on the show called The Singing Peek Sisters, girls who absolutely could not sing on key but tongue-in-cheekishly said they were driven to the stage by their "God given talent". The group broke up, but in late 1986 one of the sisters, Wanda Peek, wanted to reform the group, so they asked me to be the first boy to play one of the Peek sisters. I thought it'd be a lark and would mean doing it one or two times, but here I am today not only being DeAundra but also about 10 other characters as well. Today the Peeks are yet another combination of sisters, with one of the original Peeks, Starla, and our little sister, Baby Jean, taking it to the stage and screen.

J: How much of yourself is in your characters?
 
R: There's kinda a part of me in every character I play, most of them have some sort of crazy edge to them. I think I get to burn to a crisp things from behind the facade of a character that maybe I keep to a simmer as myself. DeAundra's a really sweet trailer park ingeneu but terribly naive. Boompah Bailey is a horny old man after anything at all (he's got so little time left you know). Nurse Macworld is always trying to give out some kind of "medication" to ease the pain. Ryanne Cannon ("I'm not just Dyan Cannon's younger stepsister!") is a deluded Hollywood wannabe. Your Aunt Roz tries to be commonsensical between the cocktails and coffee. Ashley Briquette Goulet is a strange child with behavioral problems. Dr. Peedeen Hunkapillar wants to be a good veterinarian but he's almost too busy working on his announcing career to effectively check your cat for a urinary tract infection.

RANDI BUTCHER

J: What in your view contributes to some people's need to become an entertainer with multiple personas/characters?

R: Billions of people live in this world with us, each of them is a different character. That's practically an unlimited field of being, a wealth of inspiration for somebody like me. You see somebody on the train and you say, "Wow, now that's an interesting person, I wonder what they're like." It's a challenge and a joy to come up with a new personality, somebody that the audience actually begins to believe and interact with as a real person. It takes me outside of myself so I can be lots of different people as well as just me, and I think it increases my view of what reality is to other people. I also have an insatiable lust for making people laugh, and luckily I seem to be able to do that.