mary-masked

Cookie Monster Before and After

Published: July 4th 2017, 3:12:01 am

This was an act that I always *almost* liked. 

I love the song. I love feeding cookies to audience members. I love looking super pretty and then shoving cookies in my face. But I was never really sure what the  costume should be so it was always stuff I could pull from my closet.  And I was never sure how to end it.  

In 2013 When I started the project  of revamping my acts, I found the perfect fur, came up with the idea of a drapey Erte thing, and decided that the act should end with dumping  cookies all over my body. I found the dress at a Betsy Johnson sample sale and immediately knew that it would be great for Cookie Monster. 

And then... nothing happened. No one booked Cookie Monster. And I wasn't  getting booked in shows where I could do whatever act I wanted. I'm always in awe of people like Tiger Bay and Cheeky Lane, who make these  elaborate, expensive, but utterly bizarre acts and then somehow manage to get  them booked all over town. I've never been able to do that. 

But then Rita asked me to do Cookie Monster for her show and I was like "is  this really the best use of my time? The act has never been great and I  don't know how to make it work, other than changing the costume." But I  love working with Rita so I said yes. 

And  somehow, changing the costume *worked* I think the Erte swag is  ridiculous enough that you *have* to wear it with the confidence of a  rockstar. It also gave me something to choreograph around and acted as a  tarp for catching the cookies I dumped all over my body. It didn't catch all of them though because, it turns out, those things can really roll. 

Sometimes  all you need is a little something extra to take an act from goofy to  ridiculous.  It just needed to be a bit larger than life.