We were lucky to catch up with Alli Villines recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alli, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
A dear to my heart project I’ve been working on is the work I do at a children’s hospital. I’m going on three years as a teaching artist through Theatre Under the Stars’s Arts in Medicine program with Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital. I had been a teaching artist, both freelance since 2007 and with TUTS since 2017, working with elementary schools, various community organizations, theatres, and my private voice and ukulele studio, but in September 2019, I began my journey with Arts in Medicine. I bring my trusty uke, a small bag of hand percussion instruments, my voice, and my imagination to CMHH twice a week, and play with and for patients in their rooms. Sometimes parents or guardians are there, sometimes nurses, sometimes doctors. I just try to be a calming and positive presence. And I don’t always sing or play music; we might play Barbies, Uno, theatre games, word games, or sometimes just sit and talk. When COVID hit in March 2020, I remember taking a week off and that turning into 3 months. But, luckily for me, I was welcomed back in June 2020 and have been going ever since. It can be difficult work because sometimes I see difficult things but it is work that I love and feel gives me purpose. I took time to reflect on what kind of artist do I want to be and what does my art bring to the table in those first months of COVID. The answer is simple: if it falls under the umbrella of doing music and helping people, then that is what I feel is my purpose. I was looking for tangible ways to help because creating can be so abstract, but watching blood pressure numbers lower on a monitor while singing to a baby, that feels somewhat helpful or maybe moving in the right direction. I have a special affinity for babies when I’m working at the hospital; the time has yielded a lot of improvised lullabies.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m Alli Villines. I’m a Houston-based singer/songwriter, puppeteer, performer, and teaching artist. I have a private studio of voice and ukulele students. I work as a freelance actor and performer with several theatres in town, though my sights have shifted a bit more to composing/writing music for shows, while dabbling in music direction. I have received both Master and Bachelor of Music degrees from Arizona State and McNeese State respectively. I was born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and knew (and was encouraged) from a young age that I would do music for life. I started singing when I was three and started playing oboe when I was 12, and ukulele when I was 21. I love teaching and sharing music with others. I believe in love, community, mutual aid, and the healing power of the arts and creation in any medium. I stumbled into puppetry in 2009 and have performed as a puppeteer both in film and on stage. Along with Greg Cote, I am half of lo-fi puppets & stuff, a DIY-focused puppetry company. During the pandemic, lo-fi has released a series on Youtube called “Crankies of Curiosity,” in which we tell stories of curious creatures, both imagined and real, through the ancient storytelling art forms of crankie boxes and shadow puppetry. Each episode features original music composed and performed by me.
A skill that I’ve honed over the years is the ability to compose and arrange music and songs in various styles. For 4th Wall Theatre’s production of Gloria this past spring, I was tasked with writing a song about a fake pop star and the director wanted it to sound like Mazzie Star; I sound nothing like Mazzie Star, but I put my spin on it and it worked great in the show. I’ve composed a Christmas song for Tamarie Cooper’s Holiday Spectacular, and this past summer, composed the opening and closing numbers for Tamarie Cooper’s summer show at Catastrophic, big Broadway-type numbers, both of them. My own original music is a bit more jazzy folksy, but I’ve written in styles ranging from punk to Scottish air, doo-wop pop to the most recent final song “Shadow/Light”, co-written with Hessam Dianpour, for Afsaneh Aayani’s “The Moonlit Princess,” based on the Persian fairy tale MahPishooni. I’m also very proud to get to work with Lydia Hance of Frame Dance, and compose for and accompany live dancers for their shows, the most recent one was The Family Mantra, an hour of looping with my ukulele, voice, and mini-synthesizer. These are just a few examples that I hope can highlight that I enjoy the puzzle work of writing/composing in lots of genres, and that I THOROUGHLY enjoy collaborating!
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I was raised in a deep Southern-fried Baptist church and while there are plenty of negative things I’ve taken away from that experience, one of the positives is a tenacity for research and reading for edification, so I have lots of recommendations! I always point to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as a turning point for me in my creative journey. Walking through that 12-week workbook helped me work through issues with affirming and owning my artistry, struggles I had with jealousy, and the discipline of writing daily. I write nearly every morning for the past 4 years. Another book/course I did a few years ago that was so helpful in my songwriting is Songwriting Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison. Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Art Matters by Neil Gaiman. Misfits by Michaela Coel. More to the point of management and entrepreneurial thinking, Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins, though I hate that title. And The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Even more than that though, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. But I think if you’re gonna pursue art and creating as a full time thing, you gotta have your artist’s philosophy down solid or you won’t even make it to the entrepreneurial part. There’s this fantastic essay by Andrew Ross called The Mental Labor Problem and it’s all about the devaluation of mental labor or cultural labor, which is 75% of what artists do.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I think among the several glaring truths of inequity revealed during the Pandemic, is the fact that we all consume art on a daily basis and rarely pay for it, in monetary terms. So let’s start there–pay for the art you consume; the song that saved your life, the story that made you feel whole again, the poem, the tv show, the cartoon, the puppet show, the symphony, the ballet, the performance art piece, the original garment, the fusion meal. Don’t rely on Amazon or Spotify to do it; the artists won’t see much of a dime. If you can support an artist directly in this weird late-stage capitalism we’re living in, do so. Because more often than not, the artists are the activists, the artists/activists are the culture, the culture creates the conditions, the conditions create the society. It takes time. I do wish everyone, whether they were an artist or not, could be valued and have a basic income for living. Then people would choose the work they want to do, to contribute to society, to help each other. It’s not the world we live in but it’s the dream of many. I do believe highly in community. So, being a part of your community and finding your passion and sharing your skills and resources in your community. There is more than enough for everyone if we shared. Who are the artists in your community and how can you support them directly? Majority of us won’t be famous, majority of us don’t want to be. But if I can leave behind a song that helped somebody emotionally, socially, mentally, spiritually, I guess I’ll have done alright.
Contact Info:
- Website: ukulalli.com & lofipuppets.com
- Instagram: @ukulalli & @lofipuppets
- Youtube: lof-fi puppets: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6OdBMAnH80fp4G7kqjYspA
Image Credits
Fluid Frames Dance Photography Aisha Khan Pin Lim Lynn Lane Also pictured; Greg Cote, Chaney Moore, Sloane Teagle