To tell the truth, I was nervous about interviewing Valerie Fuchs. She seems so contained and reserved that I wondered if she'd think my questions foolish. Valerie is a beautiful, slim woman with dark, very intense eyes, and has somehow that look about her that says "Private--do not disturb." I had a friend in high school like this: I used to tell my mother that I wished I knew how to be "elegantly quiet" like Donna Frederickson was. But my impression of Valerie didn't turn out to be strictly accurate--there is that calm, reserved exterior, but after talking with her for a couple of hours, asking her nosy questions and probing for deep-down answers (which she provided), I realized that she's very open, witty, candid, with touches of delicious irony in her articulate conversation, and quite easy to converse with. But still, I think, Valerie Fuchs, who describes herself as having a rich interior life, is an essentially private person.

I started out by reassuring myself that she wasn't a lifetime Nantucket resident or a native, because if she was, that would certainly put this interview into a different category. "No," Valerie laughed. "Even if I'd been born here I wouldn't be a native, I'm sure--you know, they'd find some rule or other...that I hadn't been conceived here, or something like that. I came here to live in May of 1986. I grew up in the Washington, DC area. My father was career CIA--that's a whole other thing." (As the interview proceeded, I became aware that within almost every response to my questions there lay another potential avenue to pursue.) "I was born in Frankfort, Germany, when he was stationed there. I have two older brothers, and after I was born we moved to the Washington area. I attended the American University, and spent about two years there after college, but I never felt like I fit--I just was not interested in the power thing, and in urban life. And I found it difficult to feel safe in DC. Nantucket has been the one place in my adult life in which I really felt safe.

"At the American University I majored in Literature and Cinema Studies. I was watching the greatest movies ever made four nights a week, and getting jaded pretty fast. My minor, though, was Theatre. After I graduated I worked in some regional semi-professional theatres in the area, but I found it very difficult to be in the arts in DC. It was very competitive, and the idea then was that if you really wanted to seriously get into the theatre you'd go to Catholic University, which had a big theatre program, and then, you know, sweep floors for three years until maybe someone noticed you, that sort of thing."

Did you always know you wanted to be in the theatre? I asked. Valerie answered, "It was always the theatre and singing for me. I'm very lucky to be able to do it semiprofessionally here, but I never really wanted to make the full commitment to flattening myself into a professional pancake, so to speak. I never felt comfortable enough to go all the way out into the cold, cruel world to do that. And you know, the demands are great for a singer. I would be...I am...happy singing five nights a month. As a small child I had total recall of any tune I heard." She laughed: "My teacher used to lend me to another teacher to sing all the songs so another first-grade class could learn them. And I'm still pretty good at learning things fast.

"In my creative life," Valerie continued, "my focus is the American popular song. There are songs I hear, and I just have to learn them and file them away. But singing as a full-time career makes for an extremely demanding schedule; people who have jobs in the musical theatre...their voices can pretty much be run into the ground. I was in a few musicals in college..." She stopped for a moment, looking into some distance. "It's funny, because for a lot of my life, and I've realized this in the last few years, it has been a matter of giving myself permission to do what I really like doing. It's very important to me to allow this to be my creative outlet, and not get in my own way.

"So--while I was still in Washington, I did some theatre, but I always had a job too. My day jobs have always been in photography and photo finishing. I took two practical courses in college--beginning and intermediate photography. Basically, that's how I've earned my money for the last 15 years. I think there's a construct that says, 'Well, if you're going to be a real artist, you have to have a day job,' but I think that holds a lot of creative people back. In DC I worked for USA Today in photography. But the ventilation was notoriously bad--our print processor used regular black and white chemistry, but it heated up to a vapor point so you got prints very fast. I was doing Petra in A Little Night Music, and one night I got up to do a song and had no breath. The fixer vapor had actually settled in my lungs. At that point I said, 'I think my passion for my music and my health is more important than my 'career.' It was not a practical decision," she said, half laughing, "but I'm glad I made it. I seem to make a lot of decisions like that in my life."

At that time, Valerie was continuing her vocal studies with Susan Hight Denny at American University. "She was a wonderful teacher and also a superb vocal coach. She taught the art of acting/singing, which thrilled me. One thing I loved about her class was that we were all at different levels, but we were supporting one another. And she worked miracles with people who were obviously not going to be on Broadway. I've come to believe that being an artist is basically becoming more democratic, and that's what we were doing in her classes. If people have this little voice in their heads pushing them to perform, they're definitely a lot happier people if they do it. And Sue helped all of us learn how to do it well. I really believe that if we all do that creative thing we want to do, we'll be a lot happier. I don't think it's selfish to say that we need to be able to nurture the artist inside us. Knowing this has made me more sensitive to and understanding of the people around me who are blocked creatively."

The 'Simpler-Life' Package

In DC, Valerie said, she was dating a man whose family owned a house on Nantucket. (Aha, the plot thickens.) "I came here just for a visit with him in 1985," she said. Did you know then that it was a place you wanted to be? I asked. "Definitely," she replied. "I got seduced by the whole darn package, the whole simpler-life package...swimming in the surf, catching bluefish, and all that. And we came back in May of 1986--just to spend the summer. We broke up, but I'm still 'spending the summer' here," she laughed. You live here year-round, don't you? I asked. "Yes," she responded. "I think this is the longest summer I've ever spent in one place! The housing thing has always been a big problem, though. Like many people, I'm still moving from place to place. And now it takes me three truckloads to do it!"

So Nantucket is your home now? I asked. "Well, it's worked out that way, kind of," she said. "I'm still thinking about where I could go--on the island or otherwise. What's really starting to interest me is using singing, using the voice, in a therapeutic sense. I feel the need to study in that direction. Sometimes I feel I'm getting to the point where I'd love to go off for a while and study voice some more. Who knows?"

She paused, settled back in her chair, and thought for a moment. "I'm always saying, 'I'll just stay this fall,' and then people offer me parts and that keeps me here. A couple of years ago I said, 'Well, they've either got to offer me the lead in Hamlet--' and I mean the part of the prince!-- 'or my own jazz band.' And actually, I ended up having my own jazz band for a while. We've performed a little, at Children's Beach, weddings, parties... Jason Sullivan, the guitarist from the band, and I actually got a permit and performed on Main Street for a while. That's hard, really hard. It's something I'm not quite used to. But I really like the immediacy of it. Some people will walk by, some will pause, or sit and listen. It's a way to connect with people, one that you don't have in the theatre."

"Bizarre Retro Musical Taste"

Obviously, Valerie Fuchs will try whatever it takes to learn more about that acting/singing thing. She talked about spending many evenings sitting in and also singing at the White Elephant with Jim Badger, and at the Harbor House with Smitty and Justin Miller. "It's so nice to be able to sit down and talk about Irving Berlin with somebody," she said, then laughed again. "How many people can say they've sung at both the Chicken Box and the White Elephant?" I wondered how she had fallen in love with music from an era well before she was born. "I didn't have the normal adolescence," she said. "I couldn't tell you what the top song was in 1976, but maybe I could tell you what it was in 1936. I was born with this really bizarre retro musical taste...and I kid to my friends that I basically have the CD collection of a gay man except for the Judy Garland."

I asked Valerie how her life in the theatre had evolved, starting with that 1986 summer. She answered: "I got a job. Then, Annie Wilson was recasting the role of Sister Woman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I auditioned and got the part. I had ten days to learn it. I had actually seen it on opening night about two days after I got here. I thought it was so strongly directed, and--this is an incredibly sexist thing to say, but it was so strong I thought a man had directed it. I didn't know Annie at that time... I liked doing the play; it was very challenging." A laugh, a sigh, and a shake of the head. "But then it took me another year to be cast in anything; I hit up against that same thing Annie had. She said she began to audition for things after she got here and didn't get cast in anything. And you know, in Washington, I went to every audition loaded for bear, and got parts. But I got very discouraged in Nantucket. I auditioned and people didn't know me, and I didn't get any parts for quite a while. The thing about this place is that sometimes people can, you know, be a bit closed-minded--but on the other hand, had it not been for that kind of response, I would never have done my one-woman shows." The percolating of the ideas for those shows, then, actually began in that fallow period when Valerie wasn't doing much theatre. But it took a bit of time to get them to a full boil...

"Things Happened..."

"Eventually I did a variety of things, mainly plays--I had leads in The Dining Room, I Ought to Be in Pictures, The Bad Seed, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and others. There weren't a lot of musicals being done here--they are incredibly cost-prohibitive--so I was still a bit thwarted. I wanted to go back to singing. Then Marcia Hempel started doing some fundraisers with cabaret stuff, and so I became kind of a guerrilla cabaret artist for a while." Valerie stopped and laughed, and I asked what she meant by "guerrilla cabaret artist." "Oh," she replied, "people were doing these nice little ballads and nice little show tunes, and I'd get up and do some outrageous comedy song, like 'I Never Do Anything Twice,' by Sondheim, and at that 1940s cabaret I sang 'When the Nylons Bloom Again,' and 'Find Out What They Like and How They Like It and Let 'em Have It Just That Way' from Ain't Misbehavin'." I asked if those sorts of solos brought the house down, and she answered, "Basically, yes. Then..." and here was a suspenseful pause, "after being slighted by another director who shall remain nameless, things happened and I started putting together my own show."

Things? What things? "Well, I roomed with Ginger Andrews for a while. She's a very good friend, and has produced and done the lighting and technical assistance for both my shows here. She announced to me: 'You're going to do a one-woman show of 30s and 40s music.' She knew that I would just burst into song at any provocation, and I was working for the Beacon at the time and was mad at Ted Leach [then publisher], and I'd said, 'One of these days I'm going to give him a cheerful little earful!' Ginger asked me what that was, and I answered that it was a song from the 1930s. She said, 'That's the name of your show. Cheerful Little Earful.' Well, she went out and made all the arrangements for the show with Bennett Hall...and said I'd do it. And that's the only way I would have ended up doing that. If she hadn't pushed me, I'd have just stayed sulking in my corner and being pissed off that no one was casting me. That was the fall of 1990. Ginger just said, 'You will do this!' "

What happened after Cheerful Little Earful? I asked. Valerie sat back and got quiet. Then: "For a while I had plans... Shortly after that show I met Reb Brown at the Friendship House, and had a chance to work with him. He was a wonderful accompanist, and really liked me as a singer. We wanted to do a couple projects together; we actually had Iolanthe cast. But then...well, when we'd met it was instant rapport, as if we'd known each other for years. And because of the discretion with which he lived his life, it didn't dawn on me immediately that he was gay, or that he was HIV-positive. And he got very sick and it was devastating. Of course we couldn't do the show. I took his death very hard, and for a long time after that I felt I couldn't sing. He was one accompanist with whom I had such great rapport, and he was gone, and I let that stop me from doing my own thing for a while. I continued to take roles in plays, though, and meanwhile I was working at the Camera Shop..."

Out of the Ashes...

Even with her grief, though, the creative urge was strong, and another grand idea was quietly hatching. "Right after Cheerful Little Earful, I'd bought Ute Lemper's album of Kurt Weill music. She's a German singer, about my age. I was immediately taken with the music, and that gave me the idea for another one-woman show, but it took me a long time to pull that together. I had one abortive attempt two or three years ago. However, the idea kind of lost its spin and its focus. So much of Weill's music is operatic and demanding that I thought I should bring in another singer. She became very busy, and I felt I couldn't do it by myself. Also, it was missing a theme, a 'hook' to pull it all together; I needed a framework. So it didn't happen then. Sometime last fall, I had a sudden thought: What if the character who's singing this music is a survivor of the Holocaust? And so I threw out half the music I'd been looking at and brought in some of Weill's more political songs from that time. And it works!" She smiled, obviously excited about the show, which will premiere this weekend at Bennett Hall on August 24th, 25th, and 26th for TWN's Star Series.

"Marcia Hempel is playing the piano for the performance, and of course Ginger is doing the lighting and technical stuff," Valerie said, showing me the ambitious program, for which she'll do some 14 songs, a couple in German, a couple in French, and several readings within her characterization relevant to the Holocaust. She also mentioned her demanding rehearsal schedule, and I was more than impressed. Like many Nantucket artists and musicians, she's somehow managing to work 8- and 10-hour days and still put together a work of art that will rival big-city productions.

At this point, having been a long-time professional "serious singer" myself, I had to ask Valerie about the anxieties and responsibilities involved in doing a one-person show. You're it, I said--if you get a cold or if something happens to you, the show is kaput. How do you deal with that? "Well," Valerie responded, looking thoughtful but not looking worried, "of course I've thought about that. I have learned to sing for measured times, an hour, an hour and a half at a time, and not to force things, because I realize that my instrument is finite."

I asked Valerie if it wasn't a bit scary to be the only actor/singer onstage for a whole performance. It would be, I thought, similar to the strange and heady feeling of suddenly having to sing totally without accompaniment, all eyes, all attention on you, silence every time you take a breath, all those watching painfully aware of any glitch, missed note, awkward phrasing... But I had the distinct feeling that she relishes those kinds of challenges. A challenge it is, she admitted. "I do sing two songs a capella [all, all alone] in the Weill show because I couldn't get the music for them. And one of the songs is incredibly operatic, about the train to heaven, but we staged it with sound effects of trains rolling, train whistles, bursts of gunfire--it's the soul of the piece, really."

Astral Journeys, and Dybbukim

We'd run out of tape, but who could stop? "Oh, are we through?" Valerie asked. "I haven't even mentioned my grandfather..." What, I asked, did her grandfather have to do with a one-woman show based on Kurt Weill music and the Holocaust? She showed me her program for the show. It reads: My father and his mother before him were born in a town in Germany which is now Nysa, Poland. My grandparents and their three sons emigrated to the U.S. in 1924. Several years ago, my paternal grandmother, a devout Catholic, admitted to her daughter-in-law, my mother (whose family goes back to the Mayflower) that there had been Jews in the Fuchs family. This show comes out of my own personal meditations on my family's past.

"I probably had relatives on both sides of the question," Valerie went on. "My grandfather could see what was coming in the 1920s, and he decided to go to America with his family. But his uncle was a U-boat captain. My grandparents were very much with me when I was working on the Weill show. I knew my grandmother, but my grandfather died 8 years before I was born--however, he knew me." How was that? I asked. "He gave my father his watch and said, 'I want you to give this to your daughter.' At that point my father had two sons, and it was uncertain whether my mother could have another child, so that puzzled him. Then I was born, in 1962.

"My grandfather had written a religious tract called "Mysteries of God and Man," and a couple years ago I read it thoroughly. It was clear he had a profound relationship with his teaching angels and his God. In the tract he was really doing some very shamanic things...in an astral journey he describes he goes into a toystore to buy a stuffed elephant for his children. The store owner wraps it, but it becomes a completely different package, and Grandfather realizes it's a rifle. He confronts the man, and then realizes that there are people who are not very highly evolved, and that this is the only reality they know. It was really stunning reading. Well, when I was putting the Kurt Weill show together, I thought, 'I really want a stuffed elephant for this show.' I went all over Nantucket, but I couldn't find one. After Christmas I went into the Stop & Shop and there are all these stuffed bears for sale, and in the middle is a stuffed elephant! This was a symbol, and I knew it. I didn't care how much it cost, I had to have this elephant. And then I found it was on sale for $2. The thing is, I paid $3 less than my grandfather did in his dream. This is my real totem through all this. It's a very spiritual show, a real way to honor my family, and honor my connection to the Holocaust.

"Another weird thing happened; when I was putting the show together I was beading like crazy, and I'd never worked with beads before. An incredible energy took over. It occurred to me that all the really good beads used to come from Bohemia...and I was working on a show about the Holocaust. I think I evoked the dybbukim, the spirits of those little old Czech ladies beading through me."

I asked Valerie if the success with which this show finally came together has her thinking about another one-woman show blending theatre and music. "Yes," she answered. "I've written a piece called Late Nights at the Dona Celeste. The plot is basically about the American popular song; it's a love story set in a piano bar. I think one of my personas is a sleazy lounge singer," she laughed, "and I've spent enough evenings in the White Elephant and the Harbor House to know about that. I guess Late Nights is kind of a tribute to all the lounge singers I've listened to in my misguided youth. I'm hoping that maybe, if I'm here in February, I can do it for the February Showcase that Theatre Workshop of Nantucket does."

There it was again--that professed uncertainty about whether or not she'll really stay on Nantucket. But she's discovered something that has kept the island from becoming too restricting. "It's the blossoming of the Net," she said. "You can really be anywhere and still do your work. The Internet makes you feel connected to America without having to go there..." Does that mean she'll keep feeding and enriching her Nantucket roots and island audiences with her creative works? I for one hope so. It's certain, at any rate, that Valerie is happily experiencing many stages of growth in her chosen creative medium. Her deliberate choice to work at nurturing the artist within is what has enabled her to write and perform the Kurt Weill Cabaret she'll do in a few days, which has the lovely title Lost in the Stars.

But there's one thing...maybe back in 1985 she was seduced by "the whole simpler-life package" on Nantucket, but as is true for most people who strive for self-fulfillment, she knows there's no such thing as "the simpler life." Valerie Fuchs seems to have accepted that with equanimity; in giving herself that permission to do what she really loves to do, she is truly reaching for the stars, and not getting lost. In her words, "For a long while I kind of lived with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brakes. I'm being kinder to myself now. I'm not married, I don't have children, so maybe my job right now is to just nurture myself. If I can be the best big fish in a small pond, the best me here I can be, maybe someday I can take my act on the road, and maybe I can help someone else."

Break a leg, Valerie Fuchs!