Mary Birdsong is probably best known as Reno 911!‘s Deputy Cherisha Kimball on the improv comedy series and its two spin-off movies, Reno 911! Defunded and Reno 911!: The Hunt for QAnon, and as a voice actor, for appearances on Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law and Tak and the Power of Juju. But she also has an impressive Broadway and live-theater resume, including a role in the Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me comedy musical and in the 2008 Broadway production of Hairspray as Velma Von Tussle.
Recently, I discovered Birdsong’s artistic talent includes mirth, madness and magic markers, aka the Birdsong Dreambook. I caught up with the artist to primarily discuss her artwork over the phone, but we also touched on her famous Judy Garland impression and Reno 911!
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This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.
Rebecca Kaplan: How do you structure your artistic routine?
Mary Birdsong: My routine is ritualistic or habitual. I feel cheated if I don’t get to it every morning. It’s not discipline. It’s like saying somebody who binge-watches The Sopranos is disciplined about it—but they can’t stop watching, right?
Most of what I make is done in the morning, within three hours. As soon as I get up, I make a big pot of tea. Then, I go to my desk, and my main goal in writing in my journal is to recollect my dreams from the night before. I love doing it as a challenge to myself.
As they say, if you don’t write them down right away, they disappear into the ether. I love how I won’t remember anything, but suddenly, I might glance at a plant on my desk, and it all comes back like I just burst a bubble.
I usually write down my dreams with words. As images come up, I’ll start doodling with errors. It forces me to draw stuff that’s not in my wheelhouse. I’m challenged in architectural and geometric elements and better at people. It depends on the day and dream; it could be an elaborate and full-blown thing with the nail polish and everything, or it could stay a black and white cartoonish doodle.
RK: What kind of media do you use to make your artwork?
MB: I used 11 by 14-inch hardbound sketchbooks for a long time. I first got one by mistake. Now, I write in plain 99-cent composition books. I write in cursive handwriting script; the physical action lends itself to recalling dreams and creativity. They are studying cursive because many schools aren’t teaching it anymore. Something about the continual activity reaches a part of the brain that typing doesn’t, which I find fascinating.
Eventually, I started drawing more in my journal. Sometimes, I draw on my desk calendar, which is a big desk blotter. I also love taking potentially trash things and making art, like hat boxes, Fancy Feast cardboard boxes and old plywood. I think those items are innately more interesting artistically. When I grew up, we never had any money. Poverty makes everything precious. The art world seems more open these days to different materials.
I always start with a Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Ultra Fine Point Black Pen. Because I can’t erase it, I love PRESTO! JUMBO correction pens and postal service priority mail labels to cover up mistakes (they’re convenient because you can rip them into all different shapes and sizes, and they’re white and free).
I used to use nail polish because it’s cheap, everywhere, and good for small things. I also used eyeliner and liquid makeup like foundation. When I leave the apartment in the morning, I’m often covered in nail polish, Wite-Out and magic marker because I was tearing myself away, like, “Ugh, I gotta go act.”
RK: Have you taken art classes, or did you teach yourself?
MB: I never took any art classes other than what was offered in public school. I have amazing elbow macaroni Christmas trees if you ever want to see them. I have a couple of friends who are into visual art. I want to study art someday, although sometimes I worry it’ll make me too self-conscious if I study it.
Well, I have a brag too. There was a boating safety poster contest when I was in fourth grade. My award-winning poster depicted somebody drowning in a boat and somebody throwing them a rope, and it said, “Don’t be a dope; throw them a rope”—mic drop.
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RK: Don’t you have another brag too? Your first art show was in 2018.
MB: I had a more well-versed friend in the art world, Courtney Rackley. She is an incredible artist herself (learn more about Rackley at Crack Arts). She would curate art shows now and then, and I was very flattered that she asked me to do it. Then, I was suddenly horrified to realize, how am I going to put my big 11 by 14 hardbound sketchbooks on the walls of an art gallery? I had to rip a bunch out of the books and put them on different things. I wound up putting some of them inside hat boxes or other materials.
I was proud of the blue glass “Butt Bottle Message” with an old-fashioned top. I wrote a message on paper, rolled it up and burned all the edges so it looked like an old message like, “Hey, did you send me a message in a bottle 30 years ago? Or was that a butt bottle message?”
You know how you accidentally text somebody? Wouldn’t it be cool if you accidentally sent the wrong person a message in a bottle? It just took way longer to get there. You could write back, “No worries. It’s cool.” And then chuck it in the ocean, and 30 years later, they’d get it.
One of these days, if I get the guts, I want to have a solo art. I don’t particularly appreciate how most art shows tend to be in a pristine setting with all white walls. I like using the space itself as part of the art.
RK: When you journal in the morning and do your art, do you listen to anything?
MB: I like silence. My mind is so busy, and my antennas are always up. Drawing is an art therapy that allows you to forget yourself and feel free. I am lucky enough to perform for a living, which is great, but the only downside is it taints that form of expression because I have career attachments.
I can feel insecure about where I am in my performing career, compare myself to others and always want to be further along than I am. Whereas drawing and painting are purely creative. I have no ego attached to them.
RK: You have a recurring dance theme in your art. Do you have a dance background?
MB: Not really, but I had to take ballet, tap and jazz in college. I went to NYU’s Tisch School of Arts. Our ballet teacher, I think, was from the Kirov Ballet. I loved her because she used to say, “It’s good, this like professional.”
When I was little, one of my favorite painters was Edgar Degas. I always loved his paintings of dancers. I begged my mom to take ballet classes. She had to write my dad a special letter and ask if he could pay for ballet because they were divorced. Even if they weren’t ballet dancers, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec romanticized the image of dancers.
When I was in high school, the girls with money all went to Dance by Verna. I desperately wanted to attend Dance by Verna, have a sparkly leotard and be in their dance showcases, but we couldn’t afford it. We had crappy linoleum floors, so when my family wasn’t home, I would push the furniture in our apartment to the side and dance to the radio. I love to dance, but I’m not trained.
I have two Édith Piaf records I put on every morning, which is bizarre, and I feel bad for my neighbors. They probably see me dancing to French music every morning, but so be it.
I idealize how graceful dancers are. Technically, I think it’s a challenge to figure out the proper perspective, angles and shapes of dance positions because their body parts are stretched in different ways simultaneously. It’s like a math problem. I tend to draw a lot of dancers.
RK: Did you learn to dance for Hairspray too?
MB: I did have to dance in those musicals. But I forget this, I was dyslexic as a kid, and I’ve mastered that enough to write and draw in the right direction, but it still surfaces constantly. It would occur when I was trying to learn dance combinations and auditions. I would often do things backward.
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RK: Because Reno 911! is an improv series, how do you develop Deputy Kimball throughout the run?
MB: When I auditioned for Reno 911!, we had to come in with a character. The character I came in with I had been working on and was called “99-cent whore,” a character I still do. She was from the South and similar to Deputy Cherisha Kimball. She wasn’t a closeted gay woman. She wasn’t as bright as Kimball. She worked at the 99-cent store and was a singer and dressed slutty.
After they cast me and I started to work with the costume designers and hairstylists, I realized my character was in danger of treading on Clem’s territory, the part played by Wendi McLendon-Covey. She is provocative in the way she dresses. It seemed too much of one color in my mind, so we tried to differentiate Kimball.
Instead, she was the opposite: no fun, by the book, buttoned-up, serious, no sense of humor, very repressed with sexual stuff and straight edge. That was the departure, and beyond that initial change and direction, it was a day-to-day learning curve.
Because it’s improv, it’s back to not having control. I love improv. As an actor, it gets me out of my brain and forces me to trust: I’ll respond more honestly to the character if I don’t overthink, which seems counterintuitive; I’ll make better, truer choices when I’m getting out of the way and responding in real-time and telling my brain to take a vacation. That intuitive improvisational stuff is more honest than anything I think up.
RK: Is there a technique you use to get out of your head? Does it happen naturally?
MB: I think it’s not so much wanting to do it as needing to do it. When I was little, I was timid, self-conscious, insecure and had low self-esteem. I still am, but I’ve learned to fake it. I would surprise my family because I would disappear and come out as a character.
When I felt scared, there was something protective about experiencing the world as someone else and hiding in character, no matter how silly it was. It was a way for me to cope with feeling shy and permit myself to do things. I didn’t know what to do, but this character would.
I love playing aggressive, uninhibited and mean people (Kimball is an exception). I’m a people pleaser, so I experience a vacation from my head. It’s a time not to be so cognizant and watch my every move or what I’m saying. It was a survival mechanism. Art serves the same purpose. It’s a vacation from my little worrywart brain.
Like they say, “leap and the net will appear,” which is why I like to perform. When the character takes over and does the heavy lifting, I’m still there, controlling that I don’t fall off the stage to survive it to have the incredible freedom to do it again. I love being able to do something where you can let yourself go; within reason, you can’t be selfish; you still have to serve the project’s purpose.
The kind of acting where you have a script, do it word for word, and repeat the same performance; that is my idea of hell.
Find Mary Birdsong on Twitter, located at @marybirdsong, and more about her artwork on her social media accounts dedicated to Birdsong Dreams on Twitter, located at @birdsongdream, and on Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube!
https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/wendi-mclendon-covey-interview-reno-911-defunded-goldbergs/
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