4 1/2 Questions with Terri Mastrobuono
At PA On Stage, we’re always trying to find out more about the people who make up the theatre community. So, we came up with our 4 1/2 Questions. That’s four specific, getting-to-know questions from the PA On Stage team — and one partial question that our interviewees can ‘make their own.’
Terri Mastrobuono is an actor, director, arts educator, and voice-over artist who runs on chocolate and wine. She is a specialist in Commedia dell'Arte and physical theater -- but can't dance. She is the co -founder of CoMotion theatre company, and escapes to Italy each summer to decompress and soak in more drama. She can currently be seen in Orlando, which runs through March 27 at Gamut Theatre in Harrisburg..
1. What is your “guilty pleasure” movie?
Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Not too guilty about it, really. I love cartoons - the exaggerated and stylized visual expression. So much like the movement work I've studied and have done my whole career. The combination of cartoon and real live actors made the Toon people in "Roger Rabbit" seem that much more like real people who were just highly physically expressive rather than imagined characters. I wanted to BE all of them!
2. Is there something you do regularly out of superstition?
There are many. Growing up Italian, we had many ritual superstitious beliefs - don't hang laundry after dark, always "knock wood" when saying something good, don't have a cat around an infant - it could suck their breath, if you dream about a deceased person it means they want you to pray for them. But the one that really hits me is "Don't put shoes on the table. It's bad luck".
One day I came home and my (ex, non-Italian) husband had put a box holding new performance shoes he'd bought on the dining room table. When I walked in and saw them, I gasped and snatched them away. He laughed at me and pooh-poohed the superstition. That night he slipped on ice and broke his ankle. He had to have surgery to reconstruct it. Some things you don't want to mess with, no matter how silly they seem!
3. What piece of music can change your day – for good or for bad?
I've Just Seen a Face by the Beatles (or most anything by the Beatles) can lift my day. Any visceral, rockin', rock-and-roll song done as muzak can ruin it. Sympathy for the Devil as elevator music? NO, NO, NO!
4. What alternate career path might you have followed?
There was a time, way back in adolescence, in which I wanted to be a surgeon. A brain surgeon, no less. In college, I began my theater studies intending to be a costumer. Then I got put in several onstage roles. That clicked. Although I did continue to do some costuming well into my career. And often made clothes and Halloween costumes for my children.
½ What is the first…?
— time I realized I could read. I loved being read to as a child, and was endlessly, annoyingly curious about everything that was written. When we'd travel I constantly bugged my parents to read billboards, traffic signs, exit indications. One day we were traveling and it dawned on me that all those things suddenly made sense...I knew what they said! It felt like that moment in "The Miracle Worker" in which Helen Keller recognizes all the hand signing as language. It was as though a huge door opened from darkness into a brilliantly lit room. From then on, I couldn't get enough of reading. One of my favorite pastimes is sitting in the sun (preferably on a beach in Italy!) reading a book. All day. Or for days!
For more information about Orlando at Gamut Theatre, click below.
