We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Molly Brandenburg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Molly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I came down to Los Angeles from Southern Oregon to pursue acting and I was lucky enough to attend The University of Southern California. The theater program was led by an amazing professor named John Blankenchip. He was extraordinary and also wickedly funny. He was personally invited to bring a group of acting students to Edinburgh to produce and act in plays in the theater fringe festival there. What an experience! We did about twelve plays in repertory, including “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Buried Child,” “The Shadow Box,” “Pal Joey,” and “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. “ We built all the sets and props while rehearsing the shows and learning our parts. One thing I learned from all that is how much drive and commitment it takes to have a life in the acting world. We were exhausted but the show had to go in and it did!

After USC I continued studying voice with an amazing teacher, an opera singer named Alice Rowe, and I also began studying improvisation first at The Groundlings Theater and then with Gary Austin, who originally created The Groundlings. It was all invaluable experience and very exciting.

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 started drawing as a child and always kept on with that and now painting too. I’ve done a lot commercial Illustration and published two books of cartoons. During the pandemic I finally started painting on Canvas which is very gratifying. I currently show work in LA art shows and have original work available on my website.

I started acting early on and came down to LA pursue it professionally as a teenager . My acting work led me to voiceovers, which I started doing while working at a corporate video production company. That led me to my current role as a podcast host for Parcast Studios at Spotify.

My voice work also extends to the lounge singer character show I do, as Miss Peggy Judy. The show involves me and a pianist performing songs along with comedy monologues about my many years on the road and my many ex-husbands. I’ve done the show in nightclubs all around California and at numerous events. It’s a great creative experience as it’s a way to just get a bit wild and explore the character wherever she might lead me. You gotta love that! I say it’s good to do projects that just bring you joy and a sense of exploration and even some weirdness . That’s what I learned doing improv and that’s why I keep going back to it. There’s always something new to discover!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think having resilience is crucial for living a creative life, or any kind of life to be honest. I think all of us can relate to the feeling of crisis we all went through when the pandemic hit, as on a global level we were all wondering what to do and where to turn.

I’ll be honest and say that during that time I felt as stressed and lost as anyone, but one thing that helped me cope was turning to my creative work and kind of “riding the wave” and seeing where it would go. For a long time I’d wanted to animate some cartoon characters I’d developed, and I was lucky in that my daughter was able to collaborate with me. We developed a story and enlisted some actor friends to play the characters. We got so caught up in the project at times we just forgot about the pandemic. We turned our apartment into and animation studio and did all the work using our cameras and phones. That project, to me, shows one way that you can use creative resilience to bring yourself comfort and also transform a tough situation into something wonderful. Our cartoon is called “The Moe and Mel Show” and now at least we have one episode on YouTube!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think the more our society can support creative people and creative entities, through tax breaks and grants and charitable contributions, the better off we’ll all be. The cost of paying rent in a theater, for example, is becoming prohibitive, but we need theaters to see shows and we need places for people to develop as artists. I know of instances where theaters have been lent to theater groups for minimal rent, and it benefits the whole community. More of that would help artists keep on doing what they do and help our society at large.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.mollybrandenburg.com
• Instagram: @mollybrandenburg1
• Facebook: Www.Facebook.com/peggyjudy
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/Fexn_Fj358o

Image Credits
Molly Brandenburg Peter Zakhary (Peggy Judy image)