seeking a wealthy benefactor
a chat with one of Chicago's most inspiring performers
well well well here we find ourselves once again
I’ve had a huge week. On Sunday, I made a canonically Republican dish called Jalapeño Popper Chicken which made me feel immortal. On Monday, I finally realized why I have a physical aversion to post-Twelfth Night Helena Bonham Carter: It’s because she reminds me of Hannah, a friend I had in seventh grade who went around threatening to bite people and sucking on her own hair. Hannah, if you’re out there, thank you for introducing me to Sting, and I’m sorry my mom ran over your foot.
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Alex Grelle is seeking a wealthy benefactor
I’m giddy (in a cool, nonchalant, sort of very artsy vibes sort of way) to share this month’s interview with Alex Grelle, one of the most inspiring figures in Chicago’s DIY comedy and art scene. I moved to Chicago in 2019; a month later, a friend took me to see The Grelley Duvall Show, Alex’s sweeping flagship revue-style show featuring the city’s most electric performers and a truly harrowing assortment of merkins. Since then, Alex has staged major productions like Full Bush, a Kate Bush tribute that fully made me cry, and Floor Show, Alex’s widely acclaimed David Bowie homage. You can also catch his monthly show, Ordinary Peepholes, which reeeeally makes me wish I could dance even a little bit.
Now, Alex and his collaborators are preparing for the first all-new Grelley Duvall Show since the 2020 lockdown. Preview night is this Thursday, February 22, with seven performance dates to follow (Color Club Ballroom; tickets $24.72–$42.75). I checked in with Alex a week before the show’s premiere to chat about artistic funding, wooden teeth, and why everything is better on VHS.
***very quickly I DO need to point out that, like me, Alex grew up in rural Missouri and went to college in my hometown, which I absolutely should’ve guessed because he has the euphoric gait of someone who’s sprinted across National Avenue for the worst cup of coffee you’ve ever had in your entire life***
onward to the interview:
Hi, Alex! What’s your day job?
Alex Grelle: Pre-production for the shows is really a full-time job, but I also work part-time catering for Lula Cafe.
The sweetest and most tender question: How do you get healthcare?
A.G.: I get some help from my parents for healthcare. I definitely need vision and dental—my genetics are insane; I’ll have horrible pirate teeth no matter how well I take care of them. I’m not saying I have rotting teeth. Or wooden teeth. I do not have wooden teeth. But it's very rare that I go to the doctor—it’s like, in The Exorcist, everyone’s scared of Reagan being possessed. But I think my biggest fear is when the doctors don’t know what she has at the beginning of the movie, and they’re just throwing diagnoses at her. That’s the most stressful part of that movie for me.
Your shows are massive in scale. How long does it take to produce a show from start to finish?
A.G.: A solid four or five months, usually. For this show, it’s the first all-new Grelley Duvall since 2019. So I've had these ideas in my head since lockdown, and it's finally happening.
Once the ideas are there, it takes me about a month to write the show with my boyfriend, Paul Scudder, who is my main collaborator and director of this upcoming Grelley Duvall project. And then there’s about a month of development—getting the team together, getting the dancers, casting the ensemble that we want.
At that point, we have about two weeks of meetings—meetings with the five or six choreographers on the project; meetings to organize the short films we include in the shows. For this show, we have four or five short films, and we’re working with an animator, too. Finally, after those meetings, we get to have about a month of rehearsals with everybody in the room.
Anyone who’s seen your shows knows they’re an intense undertaking—they’re very physical. How do you take care of yourself before and after showtime?
A.G.: A lot of water. I don’t drink during the last part of production; I stopped drinking about three weeks ago for this project. I do a lot of yoga, some meditation, either at home or with my friend Bradshaw Wish, who’s an amazing yoga instructor. Also, epsom salt baths.
How do you fund your projects? The merkin budget alone must be staggering.
A.G.: I’m working toward having up-front money for productions in the future, but for now, it's a lot of beg, borrow, and steal—asking for favors, getting loans from friends with money, trading with people. Like, oh, you let me borrow your studio, and I'll perform at your kid’s bar mitzvah. I've never performed at a bar mitzvah, but I really want to. Also, grant writing—we’ve only won one grant in the past, and that was for one of the films that we made during lockdown. It’s really hard to talk about yourself for three pages while begging for money.
I also try to pay these incredible artists as best as I possibly can, which comes through the ticket sales. Everyone's putting in so much time—it’s not a lot of money, everything I've done is a shoestring production—but it’s important to me to compensate people as best I can.
In terms of up-front funding, that’s something that’s very new to me—I’m very green—but it’ll most likely involve figuring out donors. Possibly a board, which I'm mortified about because I think boards mute people's artistic integrity. But it would be so cool to find a really rich donor who is inspired by my work—a wealthy benefactor.
Do you deal with post-show blues? How do you come down from a project you’ve been working on for months?
A.G.: The post-show blues are real. I try to relax as best as I can. I try to be with friends that I've been neglecting because of the process of the show. I try to visit my family as often as I possibly can, because they're amazing and incredibly supportive of my career as an artist. I like to draw thank-you cards for everyone involved in the productions. I’ve also started having post-mortems with the folks from the show—it’s a recent development in my process to talk to people immediately after [the show] because their thoughts, their emotions, any notes about things we could do better next time, are very fresh. It’s very constructive.
What inspires you?
A.G.: The Douglas Sirk era of movies is really inspiring to me right now. Also, Todd Haynes, who directed Far From Heaven with Julianne Moore which came out when I was in high school. I just aged myself, but I don’t care. I’m not an ageist, but I'm starting to feel sore, you know?
[Note from Lil: Todd Haynes also directed “Safe” with Julianne Moore (1995) which is one of my favorites ever because I love the idea of being allergic to a clock radio]
Also: I watched this movie Where Love Has Gone. Susan Hayward plays a famed sculptress; Bette Davis plays her mom, and there’s just no irony in it. And it’s really, really bad—it’s a rip on Douglas Sirk—but just I love that era. I miss that time when there just wasn’t any irony in these things. They’re so camp, and they’re taken so seriously, and that’s my approach as well. I love comedies that aren’t playing comedies—they aren’t playing the jokes. They’re playing the characters; they’re taking the material seriously. Like, all of Christopher Guest’s work. Christopher Guest is like a god to me.
I have a huge VHS collection. My boyfriend and I, we don't really stream anything; we love to collect VHS movies at thrift stores. I love practical effects and sci-fi, and fantasy films from the 80s—those are the kinds of movies and live shows I want to be creating. I want there to be as many puppets as possible. All movies look like video games now, which is really uninspiring.
I'm also really inspired by after-school specials, any made-for-TV movie about serious subjects with really heightened acting. Made-for-television movies might not have the best actors, but I love how hard they work—the actors have these horrible scripts, and they’re working so hard.
Also, any soap opera. I’m really, really inspired by, like, “Melrose Place.” I want to do another project where it’s just about sex and drama—office drama, ad agency drama, medical drama—and there’s an evil twin at some point.
It’s a uniquely hard time to be producing creative work, especially with a comedic bent. What keeps you going when the work is hard?
A.G.: I want to shout out my boyfriend and creative partner. He gets everything on its feet, along with my friends—people like my co-writer Jesse Morgan Young, and our stage manager, Ellen Willett. Sarah Larson, who helps document our process with her incredible photography. All of these people make me feel like we’re doing something good in the dark times when I'm doubting everything—and those dark times are inevitable before every show.
All of the friends who do this incredible work with me—that’s what keeps me going. Maybe it’s saccharine to talk about it that way, but my collaborators make me want to keep doing this. I’m so grateful that we get to work together to express ourselves, to express our vision.
go see Grelley Duvall! it’ll knock your socks off!
thanks for reading, see you next week <3
seeking a wealthy benefactor and thinking about famed sculptress Susan Hayward,
Lil
Aw, I remember Alex from my Moxie days!