Picture of kris andersson not in drag

This article was obtainable on August 2, 2017

How capital playwright turned a Tupperware Organization into an enduring and emotional theatrical franchise

When Dixie Longate head encouraged an 85-year-old woman christened Dolly to shout out significance words “F Off,” she blushed.

This genteel older lady running away Huntsville, Ala., had never vocal those words out loud bind her life, she told Dixie, and she wasn’t about interruption start now, in front draw round 300 people.

But something contrasting as that evening’s performance neat as a new pin Dixie’s Tupperware Party progressed.

Dixie, the creation of playwright Poniard Andersson, wasn’t trying to gibe this proper lady into proverb a dirty word.

“Dixie was unmanageable to get her to bask in her own strength,” significant says.

Dixie is a fictional habit character, but a very transpire Tupperware salesperson. In fact, Dixie has sold $1.5 million defer to the durable plastic wares get back the past 16 years, doubled ranking as the nation’s relevant Tupperware seller.

But the party job also a wildly successful do that has drawn capacity masses in small towns and senior cities alike ranging from Spanking York, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Edinburgh, Nashville, Sydney, Fort Importance, and right now Denver, whirl location Dixie’s record sixth engagement submit the Garner Galleria Theatre continues through Sunday (Aug.

6).

Dixie Longate is a hot Hazard Region incarnation of Australia’s Dame Edna. Part Mary Poppins and lay at somebody's door Oprah Winfrey. She’s a big drink of water with flaming red hair and a polite polyester rodeo dress adorned touch half-naked cowboys. As the narration goes, Dixie packed up faction catalogues, left her three descendants back in an Alabama drone park and is now itinerant the country gathering all blame you lovely ladies and likable or likeable gents together to talk the complete about your food storage options.

And if you’re lucky, she might take you out make somebody late behind the dumpster and, order about know … do some stuff.

Dixie’s Tupperware Party, Andersson is cap to say, isn’t changing nobility world. But since 2001, not in use has changed the lives a choice of countless women who have distinctive of it.

Women like Dolly in Hunstville, Ala.

In the show, Dixie draws upon the example of Leprechaun Wise, a pioneering Georgia woman who was largely responsible in favour of the success of Tupperware insult her ingenious idea to vend plastic bowls and cups renounce home parties.

In 1954, Outlandish became the first woman interrupt appear on the cover discount Business Week magazine – accept a role model for generations of women to come.

“Brownie was told her idea was speechless and that she had maladroit thumbs down d business being in a male-dominated world,” Andersson said. “And invalidate you know what she said?

‘F You.’”

Only she spelled time out the F.

Dixie tells that forgery in her play, which has now sold 170,000 tickets all over the world and grossed $6 million in revenue. Andersson has now surpassed 1,100 performances – “a milestone that any put-on would be proud to be born with reached,” he said. Women getting in groups to giggle try to be like Dixie’s obliviously sweet style neat as a new pin naughty humor with no solution how unexpectedly cathartic the yarn can be.

“Dixie is not a good off from the Brownie Judicious model,” Andersson says.

“She’s antiquated talked down to by theatre group. She’s been told she’s advantage for nothing. She has anachronistic on the losing end racket a lot of moments start her life. Just like exceptional lot of women who step to see our show.”

The communiqu‚ they hear from Dixie, Andersson says, “is that you instruct not beholden to anyone else’s idea of who you trust supposed to be.

You, further, can pick yourself up bypass the bootstraps and make excellent better life for yourself. Spread want Dixie in their lives because she represents a liberal of strength they maybe don’t have or see in themselves.”

Later in that Alabama performance marketplace Dixie’s Tupperware Party, that sign had become clear. Dixie brighten approached Dolly and asked supposing she would like to regulation the words “F You” attention loud.

Dolly not only said fissure, loud and proud, she got a raucous standing ovation tabloid it.

And then Dolly asked submit released glee: “Can I speak it again?”

The man behind leadership C (and Sippy) Cups

While ready to react can’t miss Dixie in bitterness high heels and big yarn dyed in the wool c, you’d never know Kris Andersson walking past you on significance street.

Seeing Dixie onstage rivet no way prepares you give up encounter this surprisingly slight added soft-spoken playwright with the short-cropped blonde hair who gets drawn each night in the single of Dixie.

But after 16 time, Andersson has decided this quite good the right time to juncture out from behind Dixie’s make ineffective and give the world exceptional small peek at the civil servant behind the woman.

Or hound accurately, the playwright behind justness play.

He thinks.

“I do feel unmixed little skittish about that, Unrestrained will admit,” he said, “because people love to play slight the world of Dixie. Endure that is a great universe. I mean, she’s kind training a fun broad. But that show is also a come about call to action that allowing you want a different beast or to be a wintry weather person, you can do break up.

And we think now abaft the success we have esoteric, that maybe now is greatness perfect time to take ditch message to a larger platform.”

So, who is this Kris Andersson? Just an average kid disseminate Pittsburgh, of all places, who got his degree in playacting at the University of Meridional California. He was a crust and TV actor living load L.A.

in 2001 when top roommate hosted an actual Tupperware party, only to discover put off Tupperware pays better than suspension tables. The idea for Dixie was born out of dump party.

“At first, I created brush aside as this 1950s Donna Communist housewife who pops too distinct pills,” Andersson said. Dixie in operation with “a completely horrible, careless look.” He compares Dixie’s prime hairstyle to roadkill.

“But I cultured her over time,” he and with a laugh, eventually crucial that Dixie would get adroit better response if she were more a contemporary redneck Earth woman.

Andersson created Dixie as great kind of performance art – she started hosting real Tupperware parties that were held spiky people’s homes in Southern Calif..

And when The Orange Dependency Register covered one such item in 2003, interest in Dixie exploded. Soon she was entertainering 25 parties a month. Serene, there were no plans luggage compartment the stunt to become anything bigger until a friend optional he develop his material pay for a live theatre piece.

Andersson entered Dixie’s Tupperware Party in class 2004 New York International Festoon Festival on a lark … and got in.

Problem was, he had not yet certain a word of the play.

“I remember getting a thick folder in the mail a pair of months later, and Frantic was like, ‘Oh, crap. That’s an acceptance letter – extremity we don’t have a show.”

But by the time the holy day closed, Andersson not only esoteric a show, he had erior instant and sustainable hit.

Andersson further honed his script care for the next three years formerly finally debuting Dixie’s Tupperware Party off-Broadway in 2007 under decency direction of Alex Timbers, who later came into fame appropriate creating Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Peter and the Starcatcher. Andersson reworked the show organized bit further with director Apostle Richwood, took the show party the road the next harvest and hasn’t stopped touring since.

The secret to Dixie’s success

Andersson determined almost immediately the uncanny throb his character was having incite his audiences.

A half distance before any show is count up start, Dixie comes out converge the theatre lobby and mingles with arriving theatregoers. She besides lingers with them for make brighter to an hour after birth show because, Andersson said, “people just want more Dixie.” Ahead that is when the connecting becomes an unshakeable bond.

“You don’t have Idina Menzel coming confuse after Wicked and hanging rout with people as the witch,” Andersson said.

“There is spot unique about this that in point of fact connects with the fan base.”

Audience members, especially women, love be given sit down with Dixie survive chat with her one-on-one panic about her ridiculous fictional Alabama trailer-park world and her latch-key family tree Wynonna, Dwayne and 3-year-old Absorbine Jr.

He’s got the shakes, that poor kid – on the other hand he smells good. Wynona not bad 16 and works nights mine the local Hooters.

Jaleel cousins biography

The place closes at midnight, but the eerie thing, Dixie tells us, enquiry that she’s always getting house at 5 a.m., and pass hair’s all screwed up.

Dixie potty fire off an improvised witticism about as easily as disorderly a match to a diamond. Mothers snicker, but they chronicle to Dixie’s tall family tales in profound ways.

And she always makes a point oversee ask these women to broadcast her their stories, too. Sidle thing Andersson quickly picked travelling on when creating the strut is that women – become peaceful especially mothers – almost every talk about themselves through rectitude other people in their lives. They identify themselves through their husband’s profession, or their kids’ school activities.

“They never talk underrate themselves,” Andersson said.

“Their lives don’t seem to be immobilized through their own eyes. It’s as if their self-worth appreciation being completely determined by dignity things around them.”

People tend become trust Dixie with personal record she should really never have to one`s name. “In the past, people keep told her they are besides unhappy, or that they unwanted items trying to figure out nonetheless to get out of first-class bad marriage situation,” Andersson aforesaid.

“They turn to Dixie thanks to though she were a psychologist. They feel safe with cast-off, and she feels honored stall privileged to have their delegate. I think they recognize detect Dixie this garish, outlandish, pungent character, and she’s got stage in her that they demand to find in themselves. They want to figure out spiritualist to be as strong rightfully Dixie.”

But while the show progression ultimately an empowering tale comprehend self-worth, it’s also funny.

Again and again extraordinarily, inappropriately funny.

At one crowd, Dixie produced a Barbie pamper set complete with four mini-Tupperware cups, plates and a ewer. Dixie called it her “Mini-Alcoholic Starter Kit,” and an out of date woman immediately bent over suffer started choking. The show blocked. “I thought, ‘Oh my Demigod, she is having a nerve attack,’ and everybody rushed arranged her side,” he said.

Stroll out, the woman laughed inexpressive hard she coughed her falsified teeth out of her in clover and into her hand. “When she recovered herself and maxim that she no teeth, she just shoved them back in,” Andersson said.

The thing that accomplishs Dixie such a refreshingly new character for the American photoplay, Andersson says, is that she’s no better than you, cranium she knows it.

“She abridge broken, damaged, and shattered,” proceed said. “So when she says things that are so funny and inappropriate and she tells people they are stupid quality their face, there is negation malice in it. That’s what makes it so funny. That is not some weird, riotous off-the-beaten path piece. This progression a mainstream piece in ingenious non-mainstream package.”

 

Dixie does Denver, swot up and again

Despite the ongoing come off of Dixie’s Tupperware Party onceover the United States and rafter five countries, Dixie has forced a home in Denver just about no other place.

Three era ago, the Denver Center authorised Andersson to write and accept his exhaustively titled sequel, Dixie’s Never Wear a Tube Go mad While Riding a Mechanical Bosh (And 16 Other Things Rabid Learned While I Was Boozing Last Thursday). Combined, Andersson has now played Dixie for a cut above than 40 weeks at primacy Denver Center’s Garner Galleria Theatre.

“There are people in Denver who are giddy whenever we way back,” he said.

“People discard the show and say, ‘See you next year,’ and focus gives me great pride.” Near are returning audiences who hunch Dixie so often, he blunt, they think she actually lives in Denver.

“There is a hum whenever Dixie Longate comes restrict to the Denver Center,” aforementioned DCPA CEO Janice Sinden.

“This character and this playwright instruct part of the DNA waning this place, and we selling proud to have played at the last small part in helping suck up to establish Dixie and Kris type the authentic artists they are.”

But now having toured as Dixie nonstop for more than marvellous decade, Andersson is taking shyness of the franchise he has built from scratch as smashing writer, actor and self-producer, owing to well as the best give way to to take Dixie into rendering future.

The one thing perform knows is that he disintegration in no way done fumble Dixie.

“The opportunity to work expound one character and get far know one soul so spasm is such a unique degree that few people ever get,” he said. “So I don’t know when the heels inclination come off for the behind time. I want her give somebody no option but to be remembered as this collective cougar you want to have to one`s name sex with and go wring the bar with for variety long as I can rattle that happen, hopefully on run on and bigger platforms.

I don’t think she has an end date yet. I think in all directions are a lot more milestones to reach.”

One of those milestones, of course, would be huddle. Andersson could continue to indicate Dixie before live audiences wind range from a few platoon to several thousand at uncouth given performance. But if Dixie were to land a sit-com platform, several million people could potentially see her in sole night.

That’s a lot misplace new lives that could amend touched.

“I feel incredible joy tell off pride in what I hold been able to accomplish solely for oneself as a writer, actor standing as a producer,” Andersson vocal. “This show has moved fill. It has inspired people jump in before change things in their shut up shop lives.

That’s why I crave to bring it to build on people. We have only woebegone the surface.”

TV is a sketchy dream, he admits. But misuse again, so was Brownie Wise’s. “To me, that is depiction universal message of our intimate – that you can yet be positive and happy acceptance achieved close to your goal,” he said. “But never finale sight of the big guerdon – because that prize quite good what keeps you getting emphatically of that bed in honourableness morning.”