Kelly Kinsella

soloNOVA Announces 2012 Storytellers 5?29-6/17 - Broadway World

Slinky and smart, Kelly Kinsella, a "just one of the foulmouthed guys" comedian, rocked the New York International Fringe Festival this summer with her one-woman show about her life as a dresser on the Great White Way. High-octane monologues with closely observed details and laugh-out-loud audacity made her performance one to remember this year. - Back Stage

Published: Monday, October 17, 2011, 8:00 AM

By Mark Bialczak/The Post-Standard

Kelly Kinsella wrote the one-woman play “When Thoughts Attack.”
The Liverpool High School graduate produces the live edition.

And, as everybody will see when the play moves from Manhattan for a hometown stop, in the Palace Theatre Sunday night, Kinsella’s the one woman in it, too.

It’s an intensely personal project, based on the battles that go on inside Kinsella’s head.

In fact, her publicity sheet for the show calls Kinsella “a woman on the continual verge of a nervous breakdown.” On stage, “Kelly attempts to overcome her lifelong struggle with anxiety. BYOX – Bring Your Own Xanax.”

No, you don’t have to wear a white jacket or carry a yellow notepad to attend.

“It’s just PR talk,” Kinsella allows. “The hardest part of promoting the play is not so much writing the play but writing the blurb.”

Consider it more comic talk from a funny woman who in 2007 brought her last one-woman play, Kelly Kinsella Live! Under Broadway” to play at Jazz Central in Syracuse.

That one was a monologue based on her experiences as a dresser for the Broadway hit “Jersey Boys.” Kinsella, 41, still holds that job, helping the actors zip in and out of their costumes during the show.

“The last show was character-based, like Tracey Ullman or Lily Tomlin,” Kinsella says. “People said to me, I’d love to hear your voice more. I did some Steven Wright-type videos, with me as myself. It was because of people’s input. And, I finally have something to say. I did some stand-up (comedy). Storytelling, Bill Cosby-like. And that kind of turned into this show.”

The stories she tells are based on truth.

“I was self-diagnosed with an anxiety disorder,” Kinsella says. “Or, I was friend-diagnosed. ‘Geez, you’re kind of nervous.’ The things I use in life — yoga, meditation — I reference in the play. Dietary changes. ‘Maybe if I stop eating whey, I’ll stop being angry.’”

Kelly Kinsella, comic and writer from Central New York, lives in Manhattan and is currently agent-less.

On stage, the stories evolve and grow, and Kinsella builds arcs. “True stories, but I heighten them,” Kinsella says. “I’m kind of a clown version of myself. I do have to say that the way I write my pieces, somebody else can step in and play the role.”

Who?

“I think it’s probably an African-American man,” she says. “My biggest inspirations have been male African- American comics like Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy. I think it’s the vivacity and the in-the-moment need to be heard.”

She says people relate to her stories.

She sent a DVD of the show to Eileen Heagerty, her friend in Syracuse whose family owns the Palace Theater.

“She watched and sent back some monologue,” Kinsella says. “She said, ‘God, that’s me.’”

That’s been a frequent comment after the show.

"The last production, a 70-year-old man said to me, ‘That’s me.’ I said, ‘Let’s run away together,’” Kinsella says. “People relate to this anxious character.”

Kinsella apparently likes the question about who should play her in the movie of the play about her life.

She jumps in again, offering up actresses Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and another African-American comic, Dave Chappelle, who had the guts to walk away from screen and stage for five years.

Kinsella expects her parents, Don and June Kinsella, of Clay, to be in the Palace Theatre, as well her oldest sister and nieces and nephews.
They won’t have to squirm about her brand of comedy, Kinsella says.
“I reference my childhood,” she admits. “You’re looking at the flaws. But I don’t throw anybody under the bus. I’m not angry that they wrecked my life. It’s funny.”

Kinsella says she knows it’s a big jump from selling out two shows at the 70-seat Jazz Central to the 680-seat Palace Theatre.

“Can you believe it? It was Eileen’s idea,” said Kinsella, who added that she used to work in another Heagerty-owned joint, Pastabilities in Armory Square, wh - The Post-Standard