Monday, February 25, 2008
For Chelsie Shipley, it all began with comedy.
Comedy ignited Shipley’s love affair with theater and acting, and comedy is the reason a younger, teenage Shipley took the stage two hours into a piano recital and started telling jokes.
DeAndrea Herron, Chelsie Shipley, Jordan White and John Volk are staring in the play Twelth Night. The play will be in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre Feb. 29, March 6-8 at 7:30 p.m. and March 2 and 9 at 2:30 p.m.
Shipley, a junior from the small western Kansas town of Lakin, remembered the day she turned a community piano recital into a stand-up comedy routine.
“My teacher said ‘Why don’t you do like five minutes of whatever you want to do, and just tell some jokes?’” Shipley recalled. “Everybody was falling asleep, and I get up to tell some jokes and play ‘Moonlight Sonata.’” Fast-forward nearly 10 years, and Shipley is still entertaining. She’s just put aside the stand-up comedy – for now.
Starting on Feb. 29, Shipley will be performing in the University Theatre’s production of “Twelfth Night,” a Shakespearean comedy.
“It’s all about identity and love,” Shipley, who will play the role of Maria, said.
Her acting career has also become defined by identity.
By working with Paul Meier, professor of theater and film and a nationally known voice and speech coach, Shipley has mastered more than 10 different dialects.
In “Twelfth Night,” Shipley’s character speaks in a Jamaican accent.
“Dat coffin and dwinkin’ will undo you, I ‘eard my lady tawk of it yestaday,” Shipley said, rolling off a line from “Twelfth Night.”
Courtney Schweitzer, a fifth-year senior from Leawood and the assistant voice and speech/dialect coach for the cast of “Twelfth Night,” said Shipley had a distinct talent for mimicking dialects.
“Mostly because she has a very unique sound,” Schweitzer said. “She’s very creative, and she takes on a dialect and makes it her own.”
Shipley’s own nasally voice seems to channel a female version of comedian Woody Allen.
“All the time I hear that,” Shipley said. “I think it’s because I talk through my nose.”
Being compared to Allen is all right with Shipley. She said she grew up wanting to be a stand-up comedian. When in kindergarten, Shipley said she would fall asleep to the monologues of “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson. She had other influences, as well.
“My dad is an amazing storyteller and just the funniest guy in the world, and I so looked up to him and tried to emulate everything that he did,” Shipley said.
Devoid of comedy clubs in the 2,500-person town of Lakin, Shipley began doing stand-up routines at local churches and family reunions.
“It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
When Shipley entered high school, she had a realization.
“I really wanted to be a comedian, and I thought well, maybe if I can act that could help,” Shipley said.
Shipley and her friends begged teachers to direct a play at her high school. Her high school’s vacant auditorium stage was soon housing a production of the “The Music Man.”
Comedy also brought Shipley to the University of Kansas, a school she didn’t plan on attending.
“I wanted to get out of Kansas as quick as I could,” Shipley said.
But when Shipley was a senior in high school, comedian Bill Cosby was performing at Allen Fieldhouse.
Shipley, along with her dad and brother, went to see Cosby. During the trip, they visited the theater department.
“I had a blast,” Shipley said. “I can’t imagine going anywhere else.”
Shipley, who has been in five University Theater productions, was nominated for an Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship last year for her role in “Hay Fever.”
“She makes really bold choices,” Schweitzer said. “She takes every part of herself and puts it into a role.”
Shipley said she’d like to give stand-up comedy another go, but right now, acting was her passion. She’d like to make a career out of it.
“It’s going to be a part of my life somehow,” Shipley said.
On stage, with the lights and the audience, was where Shipley said she felt most comfortable.
“I feel like it’s the only time in my life when I reach some monumental amount of truth and honesty,” Shipley said. “It’s a lot easier to do it on stage than to do it in real life.”
— Edited by Jessica Sain-Baird
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