Episode Details

Catch Michele’s show: Always, Sometimes, Maybe has two final performances at Red Twist Theater in Edgewater, Chicago: Wednesday, October 28 and Wednesday, November 4 at 7:30 PM. Go!

I sat down with Michele Stine, the puppeteer and clown who literally played my son in Anna Karenina eight years ago. As a puppet. We catch up, get real about the cost of chasing your art, and somewhere in there I get full body chills.

Michele takes me from a tiny Illinois town shaped like a pimple (her words) to a political science degree, a corporate HR job, and finally to two runs at the Edinburgh Fringe with Always, Sometimes, Maybe, a solo clown show about a janitor so lonely she builds her friends out of trash, live on stage. We talk about the moment she decided to stop sitting on the idea, why she asks “am I fulfilled?” instead of “am I happy?”, and the honest math behind doing the Fringe as an American. Then Hot Cakes, and a ghost story involving a singing potty training toilet that I will never recover from.

In this episode

• 00:01 Why Michele has one L
• 02:05 Eight years since my puppet son
• 03:20 Illinois and its mispronounced town names
• 04:05 Political science, acting, and what she’d do differently at 17
• 08:00 Leaving a corporate HR job to make art
• 10:17 The Edinburgh Fringe: adult art summer camp (and a show in a sauna)
• 12:47 The friend’s show that made her finally write her own
• 14:13 Always, Sometimes, Maybe and building puppets out of trash live
• 15:31 Puppeteering Seryozha in Anna Karenina
• 17:45 Happiness vs. fulfillment
• 19:56 Advice for little Michele: step back from the puppet
• 21:29 Second guessing and the vulnerability hangover
• 22:23 Hot Cakes
• 24:12 What the Fringe really costs
• 25:53 A ghost story that gave me full body chills
• 30:11 Red Twist’s One on Wednesdays series
• 32:29 Something I forgot to tell Michele

Follow Michele: @michele_joy_stine and @alwayssometimesmaybe on Instagram, and michelejoystine.com

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Ilse Will Say is an Intrepida Entertainment podcast, hosted by Ilse Zacharias Rivera. Produced and edited by Jacob Cagle. Music by Eric Backus. Photography by Joel Maisonet.

The views and opinions expressed on Ilse Will Say are entirely those of the host and guests, and do not reflect the views of any employers, sponsors, or innocent bystanders. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing said here is professional advice. We're here for the laughs, y'all.