Galloway at play: Mickee Faust Club goes mad for a musical with Jane Eyre parody

For anyone who doesn’t know — the Mickee Faust Club, a theater company in the Railroad Square Art District, isn’t for kiddies. It isn’t just for “alternatives.” But it is about having fun, agitating, and now and then, swatting you across the nose with some truth.

This season’s opener will be something special.

Running weekends from Oct. 14 through Oct. 28, the Mickee Faust Club will present a brand-new musical production written by Terry Galloway and Stacey Abbott, titled, “The Cursed (pronounced Curs-ed) House of Ravensmadd.”

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Based on cabaret sketches she’d developed years ago, Galloway says the play is her skewed interpretation of the Jane Eyre story but filled with odd characters. The poor, pathetic, 36-year-old orphan Clara, her sickly younger sister Pained, the leading man named Lord Brood, and even the Mean Girls of Poopsy, Loathy, and Vile deRude, all serve up gothic twists.

“The part that ties it all together is the music,” says Terry Galloway, with the cast of 30 who sing and dance to the live tunes written by Peter Stopschinski. “ 'The Cursed House of Ravensmadd' pokes fun at classic English literature, turning the evening into a melding of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Monty Python, and a little creepy Oklahoma.”

Just what Mickee Faust is best at.

Terry Galloway leads the way

For 35 years, the indomitable Terry Galloway, Faust’s founder, prolific writer, performer, and activist, has led the all-volunteer theater group.

She has expanded its boundaries from cabaret sketches to full-length musical productions, but also, added enough performance space in the Faust Theatre to comfortably seat audiences watching a company of 30 perform in two different theatre spaces. Sometimes the high jinks at Mickee Faust even spill into its leafy backyard.

Recently, while overseeing a rehearsal of “The Cursed House of Ravensmadd”, Galloway took a moment to reflect on the arc of a career that, at first, would have seemed implausible: “little deaf girl goes on to an international theatre career,” then to the thrill of adapting some of her beloved cabaret sketches into a full-length musical with original music, songs, and satire.

Galloway was born in Germany where Stuttgart and Berlin were her home until she was 10. Though outgoing and smart, Galloway was also on the way to becoming completely deaf. Nevertheless, back in the United States, by high school, she had begun to act with a dream that somehow theater would be her future.

Early successes in theater

Indeed, by the time she entered the University of Texas at Austin, Galloway was performing in the city’s Shakespeare at Winedale Summer Festivals.

She began writing and acting in cabaret productions and starred in a Public Broadcasting Service series encouraging children with disabilities to fight back creatively. Even as she entered Columbia University in New York, Galloway’s list of awards had already begun.

Almost immediately after college, Galloway set a hectic artistic pace. A published poet. A first play produced at the American Place Theater in New York. Her work in anthologies. Awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and PBS News Directors came her way. Best Script and Best Actress Awards followed, with appearances in London, Edinburgh, and the Kennedy Center.

Her arrival in Tallahassee and the founding of the Mickee Faust Theatre Company made it possible for her to expand her talents into production as well.

From Cochlear implants to musical

Galloway notes the past couple of (pandemic) years have been a “singularly intense time,” but she and her collaborators in “The Cursed House of Ravensmadd” have made it pay off.

Armed with a set of cochlear implants she received 10 years ago, the help of Zoom, and sudden inspiration that her collection of gothic novel skits might just be a full-length musical, Galloway says that she’s been having the time of her life, collaborating with a composer and lyricist whose sense of silliness matches her own.

“My good buddy, Stacey Abbott, read a couple of pages and said she wanted to create the musical with me.” Then, Peter Stopschinski, a prominent Austin composer, fell in love with the idea of a “gothic, freaky comedy.”

He says, “Stacey and Terry not only wrote the words of the songs, but they had a pretty clear idea about rhythms and melody. (So) I would take that and shape it into a show tune. It was all an absolute joy.”

Today, 72-year-old Terry Galloway looks around her theatre, and back briefly at her life.

She is happily married to Donna Marie Nudd, who is herself a theater director, a Florida State University professor, and partner at Mickee Faust.

When Galloway’s deafness was changed by cochlear implants, she says her life also changed.

With this new production filled with music and her wonderfully skewed way of looking at the world, she thinks she added one more way to bring joy to every aspect of living, every kind of life.

And if the wacky characters in curs-ed "Ravensmadd" have anything to do with it, they’ll likely be inviting Terry Galloway to another gothic party, another spoofy musical, and another wonderfully, weird, Faustian event.

If you go

What: The Cursed House of Ravensmadd

When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays; Oct. 14-16; 20-23; 27-28

Where: Mickee Faust Theatre, 609 Railroad Square

Tickets: $20 general admission, $15 for people with disabilities/those on a fixed income. Prepaid tickets must be picked up at the gate by 7:30 p.m. There are a limited number of seats available for purchase at the gate. Visit mickeefaust.com

Guest writer Marina Brown is a writer, painter, and cellist. Her novel, “The Orphan of Pitigliano”, won the 2020 RPLA Gold medal and Book of the Year.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Absurdity, fun and joy drive Mickee Faust's Jane Eyre musical parody