Five Questions with Opal Peachey

Opal Peachey (seated) in Marked Women Productions' "Pretty Girls"

Opal Peachey, an actor, director, and stage manager, performed recently with Cafe Nordo, and this Friday, she'll be directing a short play, Keeping Secrets, at the Little Red Studio, as part of their Victorian Fetish Show. Keeping Secrets is an excerpt from My Dear Miss Chancellor, the next full-length work-in-progress from Marked Women Productions, a company co-founded by Peachey.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up all over Pierce County: Puyallup, Kent, Auburn, etc. My mother is a voice teacher and jazz singer, so I was always in musicals and plays as a child--tap and jazz classes rather than softball practice, Nutcracker at PNB and Les Mis at the Paramount. When it came time to choose a college there were many opportunities far away from our little city on the Sound, but I was enamored with the program at Cornish College of the Arts. It's a happy accident that the campus was here at home, in Seattle. I graduated in 2004 with an acting internship at Seattle Shakes and a burning desire to be a part of new work: theatre that is personal, yet fictional and stylized, being performed for the very first time. This naturally led me to stage management, where I could choose projects I found interesting and important. It is only recently that I have made it back into the limelight, and it feels like fate; being chosen for all of the right reasons, rather than because I deliver a killer cold read.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? I'm going to geek out a little bit and say the David Lynch TV series Twin Peaks. I'm not sure if it can yet be called a "work of art," but it is something I am continually turning to, for the soundtrack, production elements, metaphor, overall storytelling, and quality of performance. It's got that weird feeling of alienation that I like to bring to any element of performance I create.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? I wish I had a knack for instruments. I can read music, but really envy those folks who can strap on any old accordion, trumpet, or guitar and pick it out by ear.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day. A normal day falls in the early morning or late night. I'm either up by 5 a.m. to work the early morning shift at Trader Joe's or stretching and warming up for performance at 5 p.m. for a 7:30 curtain. I work part-time at the grocery store, so I may have my performance days free to relax and prepare. During rehearsals I am off my day job by 1 p.m. for a nap and run, then on to three- or four-hour rehearsals, done by ten.

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome? I did make a choice, and it was to embrace my grocery clerk job that allows me to pursue my theatrical career. No one has any illusions about the amount of time it takes to make a living in the theatre. Because of this choice, I am able to devote the time to a career that is just beginning to show the monetary fruits of my labor. This enables me to visit my family in Germany, or take a few weeks to backpack in Hawaii as well as steadily climbing the ladder towards a full time career as a performer and theatre-maker.

"Five Questions" was originally developed by Andy Horwitz of Culturebot.org, a NYC-based website covering contemporary performance and culture.