Marla Mindelle, the star of Off Broadway’s Golden Age fantasia “The Big Gay Jamboree,” gets anxiety during every performance. Sure, the delightfully ridiculous show — in which she plays a struggling actress who blacks out after drinking and wakes up to find she’s trapped in a classic musical, has been running since September. But muscle memory doesn’t negate her crippling stage fright.
“I have such dread — not because the show is bad — but I’m concerned about doing a good job,” she says.
None of this panic is evident in Mindelle, whose over-the-top, irreverent sensibilities and proclivity for trolling the audience have turned the 39-year-old into the reigning queen of Off Broadway. In 2022, she co-created “Titanique,” a low-fi musical parody of James Cameron’s disaster epic “Titanic” that uses Celine Dion’s discography to retell the movie’s events from the pop chanteuse’s perspective. After electrifying downtown Manhattan crowds, “Titanique” has taken on new life with tours in Australia, England and Canada. Now Mindelle returns with “The Big Gay Jamboree,” which runs at the Orpheum Theatre through Dec. 15.
“I liken myself to the homeless man’s Lin-Manuel Miranda,” she cracks. “I’m still broke, but I’ve excelled at carving out a little queer millennial piece of the pie.”
We’re meeting the day after the election at a pottery studio in Tribeca, where her self-deprecating wit is immediately on display. She picks up two different sets of salt and pepper shakers before deciding to paint a ring holder.
“On these kinds of things, I always want to win,” she says, gazing at her blank ceramic canvas. “Until I’m doing it and I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re a total loser.’ You’re going to see my only artistic talent is performing.”
Yet she almost called it quits on the stage life. Mindelle grew up in the Pennsylvania suburbs and studied musical theater in Cincinnati. Upon graduating, she booked the 2007 “The Drowsy Chaperone” national tour before landing small Broadway roles in 2008’s “South Pacific” revival, 2011’s “Sister Act” and 2013’s “Cinderella.” But eight performances a week took a toll, so she relocated to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting.
“I left musical theater for nearly a decade because I was a cog in a wheel,” she says, swirling her
paintbrush to create a tie-dye pattern. “If you’re sick, you still have to sing. We don’t have holidays
or weekends. It’s grueling.”
Her West Coast stint was, in her words, “a nightmare.” Only one project sold — a movie version of “The Big Gay Jamboree” — in 2019 to Paramount, with Margot Robbie attached as a producer. But it languished in development purgatory. Throughout her career, Mindelle turned to dinner theater, including the Times Square classic Ellen’s Stardust Diner, to pay bills.
“Here’s the twist: You make such good money in dinner theater,” she says. “But you’re singing ‘Defying Gravity’ while an old woman is harassing you for ketchup. We would go up to the tables, eat their food and drink their wine – audience interaction galore. It shaped the way I perform.”
Marla Mindelle played Celine Dion in ‘Titanique’
By chance, Robbie saw “Titanique” last summer and emailed Mindelle to see if she was working on anything else. Mindelle and Jonathan Parks-Ramage, her college best friend and creative partner, happened to be reworking “The Big Gay Jamboree” for the stage. The show serves as a campy (and raunchy) send-up of classics like “The Music Man,” “Oklahoma!” and “Brigadoon” while stuffing in niche pop culture references to Jennifer Lopez’s durable career, “Real Housewives” — and a filthy “Do Re Mi” parody. There’s also a daring bit of improv and a searing indictment of AI. After Robbie’s LuckyChap came on board, Mindelle felt the story had permission to be resonant — not just funny.
“‘Titanique’ is full of heart but not very emotional. We wanted this show to not just be outlandish. It’s called ‘The Big Gay Jamboree,” so yeah, it’s wacky,” she says. “But it has something to say.”
Audience members frequently thank Mindelle for writing a show “for them,” which she finds funny. “I don’t even think I’m doing that. I’m just writing things that make me laugh.” But those theatergoers, she posits, are venturing to lower Manhattan for theater that’s unabashedly unique.
“Off Broadway has become a home for risk taking,” she says. “Broadway has the budget to take bigger financial risks. But it’s become more like a theme park or celebrity driven. There’s an audience and appetite to come downtown for new authentic shows.”
Last year, Mindelle went uptown to revisit Ellen’s Stardust Diner — as a patron — to try a banana split served in partnership with “Titanique.”
“It was $25, and it was delicious,” she says. All these years later, Mindelle believes she was never suited to work at Ellen’s. “I nearly got fired a couple times. I’m not an actual waitress. I’m a stupid girl with a musical theater BFA. So, how crazy that 17 years later, there’s a themed sundae for my show?”
