The Bee Chair Debates...

BCD's PEOPLE WHO ROCK - MICHELE MEDLIN

The first time I saw Michele Medlin, it was at the Parkside Lounge. She was performing with her group Chicken Ranch at the weekly variety show, Ash Wednesday. She was hilarious. She was confident. She was surprising. She was INTIMIDATING.

Michele radiates a star quality that many in the comedy community pray for, but will never achieve. How did she get so good? Maybe it’s because she’s been charming audiences she was 6. It all started with a dinner theater rendition of “Annie Get Your Gun.” “According to my mother, I stopped the show every night,” she says.

It’s not hard to believe. She went on rock the dinner theater crowds in “The Music Man,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Carousel” and “The Miracle Worker.”

In spite of Michele’s assertion that she is “the worst dancer in the history of the world,” it was right around age 8 that she decided her goal in life was to be a choreographer for Broadway. When it came time to go to college, she went right to “a small North Carolina Baptist college” (Yeah, I don’t fully understand that one either, but she promises that it had a great musical theater program), and before long, Michele found her way to New York City and on to the stage.

While in NYC, Michele has gone from children’s theater (“I think kids love me because I sound and look like them and because I swear.”), to starting her own theater company (Small Planet Theater Company), to anime voiceovers. In “The Bride of Darkness II,” she claims, “I was the bride and while I was getting married to a demon, he raped me at the altar. He had so many different things to rape me with and those tentacles got into all my oracles. I don't understand why he couldn't wait until the honeymoon. It's hard being raped by a demon. I don't recommend it.”

Finally, Michele hit the improv stage, performing with groups like Chicken Ranch and elmo.

Those who are lucky enough to share the stage with Michele can’t stop singing her praises. Fellow Chicken Rancher and close friend Sarah Nowak explains, “I have been told my weakness is ‘not embracing my power.’ It's a problem a lot of performers have. I think Michele embraces her power, and owns it and wields it and hits you with it and sucks you into a gooey orb of it.”

Stan Laikowski (Michele’s boyfriend or her “stanny” as she calls him) says, “I know I can throw anything Michele's way, and she'll catch it and return it.”

For a girl who moved around most of her life, Michele may just have found a home, “Since getting into improv, I feel like I found this community of people just like me.”

So, what’s she like when no one is watching?

According to Stan, very much the same. “Michele just has goofy in the bones. She wakes up out of a dead sleep and within 30 seconds she's making me laugh. Once I watched her make eggs and potatoes. She had no idea I was watching. She was just putting ingredients together and cooking. Her mannerisms were just as intriguing to watch as if she had been on a stage doing it.”

That’s the thing, to know Michele on stage is only to know a very small part of her. Offstage, she is one of the sweetest, most down-to-earth people I have ever met. “She is hilarious, beautiful, smart, and someone I can truly count on. And there isn't a whole universe of that floating around… I think I have gotten funnier from being around her… I have become a happier person,” says Stan.

Sarah adds, “She is generous and loving. She is very good to have as a friend. Like, seriously, don't piss her off or treat anybody she loves poorly. She is loyal and crazy feisty. She actually makes me feel really good about myself, which is cool. She is amazingly supportive… I tell her everything, good and bad, and she knows exactly how to make me feel better about stuff, by offering to stab anyone who makes me feel bad. She has an innate sense of justice and fights for the underdog.”

The underdogs that Michele fights for hardest are children. “I wasn't really protected as a child and so, I'm overly protective now. I also think (GHEY ALERT) that kids don't have childhoods any more and if I can at least help in some small way.” The thing that bothers her the most: “grown-ups beating up on kids ... with hands or voices ... that makes me fucking bat-ass crazy sad. Stupid cocks. I understand that your life is HARD but fucking put yourself in their shoes for two fucking seconds.”

So there you have it, sheÂ’s a star on stage, a great friend and she loves little kids. What else do you need to know about her?

“I wish that white people could say the ‘n’ word. I really wish that I could. I don't think I should though.” - Michele

“Girl can cook! Also, she doesn't want you to know this, but her sweater puppies are pretty fantastic.” - Sarah Nowak

“She has a freckle in her left eye. So she took care of her part of the ‘Such Great Heights’ song.” - Stan Laikowski

Now that I’ve sung the praises of Michele, here’s where you can see her or her writings and bask in her comedic glory:

Chicken Ranch: http://chickenranchnyc.blogspot.com/
Michele says: “Chicken Ranch is going to the Carolina Comedy Festival
again this year. We went last year. And, we're going to be 'special guests' at Ash Wednesday every Wednesday for the month of April. I love the girls of CR. They are just so fucking beautiful. Each one is a miracle to get to know.”

Elmo: http://www.myspace.com/elmoimprov
Michele says: “Me and Jeff Scherer, who is a fucking genius God Lover Boy of Goodness, do two-person improv, and will be at Ash Wednesday on March 22nd.”

Kill Secretary Kill: http://www.killsecretarykill.blogspot.com/
Michele says, “Me and Sarah Nowak do a blog that makes me laugh hard. I love her.”

And finally, where does she see herself in 5 years?

“If I say this out loud as in on a blog in the internet, it will come true right? I see myself as working on a cartoon with a couple of kids and a nice Stanny! in a brownstone in Brooklyn… I love Stan
Laikowski, he's my heart.”

posted by Dustin D'Addato at 12:45 PM