When I talk about your shows, I find myself using the term “performance art.” How do you feel about that term?
I no longer use it because now I understand performance art to be visual arts based work that takes on a theatrical element as part of a way to treat time and space. I am really a super physical storyteller who uses all the elements of theater and stand-up comedy and improv to create live interpretations of stories based on the truths of my life.

How will this show be different than your past shows?
This show has the added benefit of my experience doing 5 shows in 7 days at the Indy Fringe Theater Festival. I am more comfortable, more seasoned and take bigger risks than any other show I have done. Also, I have the amazing good fortune to have Lee Burkes designing and running my lights. She will be improvising right along with me.

Who or what has influenced your work the most?

I aspire to be the love child of Robin Williams, Anne Lamott and David Sedaris raised on a commune with a steady diet of twisted memoirs like Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle and Augusten Burroughs’s Running With Scissors.

Your work would find a wider audience in a larger city. What keeps in you Bloomington?
I grew up here, I love to live here and will always keep a base here. Bloomington is my spiritual homeland. I am performing successfully outside of Bloomington and look forward to being in the Indy Fringe Theater Festival and the Minnesota Fringe Theater Festival this summer.

Each of your performances is unique, but do you ever revisit stories?
If the same story I told the night before comes up and I try to ignore it out of some urge to BE MORE ORIGINAL, then the whole show gets wonky. I just dive in to what wants to be told and always there is a new angle, a new point of view, a new way it gets woven in that is what my muse had in mind all along.

I’ve heard your preparations before a show are intense. What do you do?
I have to act like a total diva for a day. Tons of alone time, a professional massage from the amazing Denise Burch, yoga, hot bath, journaling. I do what it takes to totally open and be as vulnerable as possible. I especially avoid harshness of any type. Then I do a really fun warm up with my ground crew which involves singing and stories and exercises I teach in my workshops.

You’ve studied and taught mime. Why do people hate mimes so much?
People, myself included, hate mimes because of a handful of cruel mimes who found it lucrative to mimic people in public places and bleed a crowd for money. Mime illusion technique can be a fascinating and compelling vehicle for a story. I use mimetic techniques to bring to life my storytelling and audiences always love it. They don’t hate me for it because I don’t walk up to the bald guy in the front row and pretend to fix my make-up using his forehead as a mirror. I practice safe mime.

Weatherwax’s performances of improvised story theatre will be at the Waldron Rose Fire Bay, Friday and Saturday, May 23-24 and 30-31 at 8pm.